Dr. Thiagarajah of Indiana University School of Public Health lead research into the benefits of adding walnuts to your diet.
Adding Walnuts To Your Diet
A new study from the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington found that Adding Walnuts To Your Diet one ounce of walnuts (or one handful) to the diet of children and adults who do not normally eat nuts improves diet quality and intake of some under-consumed nutrients of public health importance. This suggests that adding just one ounce of walnuts to the typical American diet is a simple change that brings many nutritional benefits for all life stages.
Dr. Thiagarajah, lead researcher on the study and Senior Lecturer of Nutrition at Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, shared that although walnut consumption is already promoted in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans as part of a healthy dietary pattern, consumers are frequently not eating enough alongside whole grains, fruit, and vegetables.
Consistent evidence shows that walnuts can provide good nutrition and be part of a healthy diet for life.1,2 Nutrient deficiencies can result from underconsumption of nutritious foods like walnuts as part of a balanced diet. When walnuts are included in a diet, the whole family benefits in small ways in terms of nutrition.
Benefits For Your Diet
This is one of the few studies that looks at the typical diet of both children and adults and simulates how the simple addition of walnuts to the diet could help achieve better nutritional status. Assuring that children and adolescents are getting all of the nutrients they need can be difficult for parents and guardians.3 Walnuts could be a simple addition to a child’s or adult’s diet by being included in snacks and meals.
To find out what would happen if nearly 8,000 Americans who do not eat nuts added one ounce of walnuts to their daily diet, advanced statistical modeling techniques were used.
Member wellbeing and dietary data were gotten from The Public Wellbeing and Sustenance Assessment Study (NHANES), which is a broadly delegate, cross-sectional review of individuals living in the US. Gender and the age group (4–8 years, 9–13 years, 14–18 years, 19–50 years, 51–70 years, and 71 years and older) were used to analyze the data.
In particular, Dr. Thiagarajah wanted to see how including a handful of walnuts in the typical American diet might alter intakes of potassium, dietary fiber, and magnesium—three nutrients that have been identified as being of concern to public health in the 2020–2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The 2015 Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2015) was then used by the researchers to compare the quality of the diets with and without the one ounce of walnuts.
Study Overview
To see what would happen if nearly 8,000 Americans who do not eat nuts added one ounce of walnuts to their daily diet, sophisticated statistical modeling methods were used.
Member wellbeing and dietary data were gotten from The Public Wellbeing and Sustenance Assessment Study Overview (NHANES), which is a broadly delegate, cross-sectional review of individuals living in the US. Gender and the age group (4–8 years, 9–13 years, 14–18 years, 19–50 years, 51–70 years, and 71 years and older) were used to analyze the data.
Dr. Thiagarajah explained that they primarily wanted to see how Adding Walnuts To Your Diet a handful of walnuts to the typical U.S. diet could change intakes of nutrients of public health concern identified by the 2020–2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, including potassium, dietary fiber, and magnesium. These nutrients are nutrients that are considered to be of public health concern.
The 2015 Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2015) was then used by the researchers to compare the quality of the diets with and without the one ounce of walnuts.
Results
According to Dr. Thiagarajah this was not an intervention or feeding study, but the modeling done as part of this research is extremely important because it allows us to evaluate broad dietary implications for the general public that could have meaningful impacts on overall health.
The fact that self-reported 24-hour dietary recall data were used for modeling in this study and are susceptible to measurement error due to large daily variations in food intake are some of the study’s limitations.
Also, this study (n=7,757) can only be used to explain how adding walnuts to the diet of people who don’t eat nuts affects them. Customers of no nuts were more likely to be younger, Hispanic or black, and have a household income of less than $20,000 per year.
Even though this modeling study shows that walnut consumption may have a positive effect on nutrition, more observational studies or well-designed randomized clinical trials are needed to confirm these findings.
Adding one ounce of walnuts to one’s daily diet can be a simple way to improve the quality of one’s diet for people of all ages. This modeling study clearly demonstrates that nutrient-dense foods like walnuts, which are low in calories, can have a significant impact on nutrient intake and diet quality with relatively minor dietary adjustments.
California Walnut Commission
The California Walnut Commission (CWC), which was established in 1987, is paid for by growers having to pay assessments. In collaboration with the Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), the Commission is a state agency. The CWC focuses primarily on export market development and health research.
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