3 Reasons Why Walnuts May Be the Healthiest Snack

What you snack on may be the most important health decision you make each day.  In this article, I share the latest scientific findings on walnuts.  Based on the results of this new study, I also discuss three reasons why walnuts may be the healthiest snack.

The Snacking Obesity Link

We are all wired a bit differently.  Some of us do best with three meals a day while others may need many small meals or snacks to get them through the day.

What we don't need are the typical snacks.  Snacking now accounts for a third of all calories people eat each day.

The problem is that most snacks are not healthy food choices.  Perhaps this explains why people who snack double their risk of obesity.  For those who like to snack in the evenings, the risk is even higher.  Indeed, studies show that evening snackers triple their risk of obesity.

If your metabolism does best with snacking then consider walnuts.  Even if you aren't a snacker, based on the data I'm going to present, you'll want to consider walnuts if you are at all concerned about your weight.

The New Walnut Study

I really liked this new walnut study.  All too often with nutritional studies, researchers just ask people to remember what they ate over the last 10 to 20 years.  Then, based on what people report eating, researchers try to correlate this to health and longevity.

The problem with these sorts of studies is that most people don't remember what they ate.  For example, I can barely remember what I ate yesterday let alone 20 years ago.

While these types of studies may provide clues, the problem is that they are often inaccurate and lead to conflicting results.  Thus, it is no wonder why there is so much confusion about what foods are healthy!

This study was different.  In this study, Harvard researchers somehow convinced 10 people to be locked up in a hospital for five days on two different occasions.  With the study participants locked up, researchers had 100% control of everything they ate.  No outside food could be smuggled in.

On one of their 5-day stays, each study participant drank a daily walnut smoothie.  On their other 5-day stay, they drank the same smoothie minus the walnuts.  To keep the study results clear, the researchers kept the calories, taste, and nutritional composition of the smoothies otherwise the same.

3 Reasons Why Walnuts May Be the Healthiest Snack

1. Walnuts Fill You Up

While these study participants were locked up in the hospital, researchers asked them to rate their hunger.  Interestingly, during the 5-days they unknowingly drank the walnut smoothie, people reported feeling very full.

To confirm that these study participants weren't just imagining things, researchers also scanned their brains with a functional MRI.  Sure enough, they found that those people who had walnuts slipped into their daily smoothie had the satiety center of their brain all lit up.

The key take away here is that if you struggle with hunger pangs between meals, as I often do between surgeries, try munching on a few walnuts.  Or, if you want to avoid snacking all together, try eating a few walnuts with your meal.  As each smoothie in this study only contained 48 grams of walnuts (about 20 walnut halves), it doesn't take much to fill you up.

2. Walnuts Make You Choose Healthier Foods

The second interesting finding of this study is that researchers wanted to tempt these poor study participants after they drank their daily smoothies.  On the days when walnuts were slipped into their smoothies, pictures of hamburgers and deserts didn't seem to tempt them.

Even more interesting was that on the days they unknowingly ate walnuts, pictures of vegetables seemed to excite them.