Health Effects of Eating Walnuts

摘要

Since the late 1980s, a number of studies have shown that consumption of nuts decreases the risk for coronary heart disease (Fraser et al., 1992). In 1993, Subate et al. showed that walnuts lower serum cholestrol and blood pressure in normal men (Sabate et al., 1993). A year later, Abbey et al. found that replacement of saturated fatty acids with almonds or walnuts lowers total plasma cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (Abbey et al., 1994). In other studies, enriching the diet with walnuts lowered serum lipids in moderately hyperlipidemic subjects (Chisholm et al., 1998) and in hypercholesterolemic men and women (Zambon et al., 2000). Overall, studies carried out in the United States, Spain, and Japan by enriching the diet with walnuts, consistently showed that walnut enrichment of the diet lowered plasma total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol beyond the effect accomplished by a variety of "healthy diets" such as the American Heart Association Step I diet, a modified-fat Mediterranean diet, or a low-fat Asian diet (Amario et al., 2001; lwamoto et al., 2002). Because walnuts have a high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids, the focus of the studies and the interpretation of the their resistance to oxidation was preserved. The total antioxidant content of foods is an important factor in the prevention of chronic diseases.