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- Low fat is encouraged for the reversal of many chronic lifestyle conditions. See The Emphasis on Low Fat for details. When we adopt low fat WFPB guidelines, we have to be mindful of our total daily consumption of nuts, seeds and avocados combined.
- Nuts are addictive: We tend to overeat them. See Dr Esselstyn's guidelines in How Many Nuts & Seeds To Eat Daily?
- Seeds are more nutritious than nuts! In the article Are Seeds Healthy? note Dr Fuhrman's acronym G-BOMBS which stands for (G)reens, (B)eans, (O)nions, (M)ushrooms, (B)erries and (S)eeds.
Keeping the points above in mind, I dropped nuts in favor of seeds for all my meals. But one nut is special: Braziln nuts (discussed below).
Which nuts to eat? If we choose to add nuts to our morning breakfast, we may experiment with any nuts — they are all flavorful! For example, almonds (soaked overnight, then ground), walnuts, pecans, cashew nuts, hazelnuts (filberts), macadamia nuts, pistachio, pine nuts, peanuts and so on.
If we rank nuts by anitoxidant content, the top 5 nuts are pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts (also called filberts), pistachios, and almonds — see The Best Nut (2 mins, 2008) by Dr Greger.
Nut tips:
- Soak nuts overnight; they become soft by morning; the resulting texture blends nicely with the morning breakfast recipe.
- Nuts may be added to boiling whole grains for softening.
- To save time, we may prepare a mixture of ground nuts (and seeds and other additives) on a weekend, keep it in the refrigerator and use it for the rest of the week.
- Nuts may be crushed in a coffee grinder ($) or spice grinder ($) or NutriBullet ($$) or Vitamix ($$$).
- Crushing can also be done by packing nuts into a cloth pouch or between two large layers of cloth and using a mallet / hammer / something heavy at home. This video shows how to use a mallet. This video uses a rolling pin.
- If we are skillful, we may use a large knife for slivering almonds / crushing nuts on a cutting board — see how to sliver almonds (with their skin on)
- The simplest way to add nuts to breakfast is to sprinkle a few of them on the final preparation without crushing / soaking them.
Brazil nuts: Why are these nuts special? See Brazil Nuts. In one of his videos, Dr Greger has a study in which intake of 4 Brazil nuts led to cholesterol lowering.
Organic vs non-organic: Ever since I read The Truth About Almonds, I started buying organic nuts — not just organic almonds but organic nuts in general. Why? The article explains that since 2007, almonds in California are either heat treated or fumigated. Fumigation is done using a chemical that's believed to be quite awful for human health. Only the organic almonds (more expensive) tend to be heat treated. Non-organic almonds (cheaper) tend to be fumigated.
Should we avoid roasting nuts? Yes, see Roasted Nuts & Baked Tofu? Keeping this guideline in mind, I avoid commercially sold peanut butter because it invariably contains roasted peanuts. Whenever I buy a nut or seed paste, I inspect the label to see if the nuts and seeds were roasted or not — I prefer unroasted.
Some Whole Food Plant-Based breakfast recipes peanut butter; that's something I avoid because commercially sold peanut butter invariably contains roasted peanuts.
Even though whole coconuts (and shredded / grated coconuts) are okay, I avoid consuming coconuts because I choose to follow a Low Fat WFPB system. I prefer to consume seeds over nuts.
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