by Linda B
Researchers from Penn State have recently conducted a randomized, controlled feeding experiment to test the effects of pistachios added to a heart healthy moderate-fat diet on cardiovascular disease risk factors. The participants of the experiment were put on diets. The article elaborates on the various diets; the diets included, as a control, a Step I Diet with no pistachios and about 25 percent total fat and 8 percent saturated fat. The pistachio enhanced diets were Step I Diets with 10 and 20 percent of the energy supplied by pistachio nuts, respectively. The 10 percent pistachio diet had 30 percent total fat and 8 percent saturated fat and the 20 percent pistachio diet had 34 percent total fat and 8 percent saturated fat. The pistachio eating participants ate half of their nuts as a snack and incorporated with their diet-friendly meals. Further reading led me to the researcher’s conclusion that the 20 percent pistachio diet lowered LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) about 12 percent and the 10 percent energy pistachio diet lowered LDL cholesterol by 9 percent.
“Our study has shown that pistachios, eaten with a heart healthy diet, may decrease a person’s CVD (cardiovascular disease) risk profile, says Penny Kris-Etherton, distinguished professor of nutrition and primary investigator of the study.”
This article, in my opinion, is astounding in the fact that something so natural and so small has the power to stand up to something so serious and potentially fatal. I feel that this nutty breakthrough has the likelihood of changing the way a lot of people view their health in terms of lowering their cholesterol. Pistachios are not only fun to open and salted to perfection, but as the aforementioned paragraph states, this culinary nut can be quite important to one’s cardiovascular health.
