Oh, the irony!

But seriously - nuts. Mother Natures little tiny gifts of delicious and healthy goodness. I have recently discovered how important the consumption of nuts and seeds is to our diets.  I think its a very important subject to touch on, and so I will - touch. on. nuts. :P (And fats!)

Myyogaonline.com says that incorporating a variety of nuts into your diet provides a great source of protein as well yields numerous nutritional and health benefits. Nuts are excellent sources of protein, minerals, healthy mono-unsaturated fats and other nutrients as well they're good for promoting a healthy cardiovascular system.

Too often we feel the need to gravitate towards a "low fat" diet. Its not really our faults, thats what we are being fed in the media.  We are filled with misconceptions and improper information about fats, and therefore we cut foods like nuts, seeds, oils (EVOO and coconut to count two) and butter/nut butters out of our diets.

From what I am hearing, we couldn't be more wrong to do so! We NEED fat in our diets. I will post more about this later. Nuts are an important addition to help us get the "good" (mono/poly-unsaturated) fats into our diet. Not to mention that they are tasty treats!

It has also been rumored that a proper balance of fats (25-30% of your daily caloric intake where 7-10% are saturated, 9-10% mono-unsaturated and 8-10% are poly-unsaturated) helps with emotional or behavioural hangups.  Good fats help your body burn bad fats and help reduce bad cholesterol, all while raising good cholesterol.

I will tell you one thing, my life got better with butter in it. Ditch the "one molecule away from plastic" spread and get some butter and use it sparingly.  Grab a handful of almonds, walnuts, pecans or pistachios.  Enjoy your sunflower seeds. Use your cooking oils but get rid of that veggie oil and trade it up for coconut (Will touch more on that later as well) or EVOO.

Thats right ladies. Let us eat fat! (And some nuts!)
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1 comments:

On February 25, 2010 at 9:56 PM , mKat said...

I do not like nuts as a general rule. The very smell of peanut butter sends me running... but your point about switching to butter and cleaner cooking oils is solid. We use olive oil, sunflower oil or canola oil... and sesame oil if we're doing Chinese.