Adding nuts to a healthy diet may help release people from a dangerous combination of health problems. Up to 25% of people in Ireland and the UK are thought to have “metabolic syndrome”, which includes obesity and high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
A Mediterranean diet of vegetables, fruit and fish plus daily nuts boosted health in more than one in eight at-risk volunteers, a Spanish study found. 13.7% of those eating their daily bag of nuts as well as the Mediterranean diet had improved. Even though none of the participants’ weight had dropped significantly over the year, waist circumferences had diminished in the nut-eating group, and cholesterol and blood pressure levels had dropped. The research was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine journal.