New research shows that eating nuts could reduce one's overall risk of death and fatalities caused by cardiovascular disease.
The findings suggest peanuts could be an affordable measure to improve cardiovascular health, the JAMA Network Journals reported. Peanuts are classified as legumes, but contain nutrients similar to tree nuts.
A team of researchers looked at 1,764 low-income black and white men and women living in the southeastern United States as well as 134,265 Chinese men and women living in Shanghai, China. Men were observed to consume more peanuts than women. About 50 percent of the nut consumption observed in the U.S. was made up of peanuts, while peanut consumption was looked at exclusively in the Chinese participants.
The findings revealed nut intake was linked to reduced mortality and cardiovascular disease (CVD) death risk across all three groups. The U.S. study group saw a reduced total mortality risk of 21 percent among individuals who consumed the most peanuts; in the Chinese participant group, the risk reduction for death associated with high nut intake came out to be 17 percent in a combined analysis. All ethnic groups showed a correlation between nut intake and ischemic heart disease risk.
"We found consistent evidence that high nut/peanut consumption was associated with a reduced risk of total mortality and CVD mortality. This inverse association was observed among both men and women and across each racial/ethnic group and was independent of metabolic conditions, smoking, alcohol consumption and BMI. We observed no significant associations between nut/peanut consumption and risk of death due to cancer and diabetes mellitus. ... We cannot, however, make etiologic inferences from these observational data, especially with the lack of a clear dose-response trend in many of the analyses. Nevertheless, the findings highlight a substantive public health impact of nut/peanut consumption in lowering CVD mortality given the affordability of peanuts to individuals from all SES (socioeconomic status) backgrounds," the study concluded.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
