Category: Nuts and seeds

Food Order

The best thing to eat before your larger meal begins is a handful of mixed nuts and seeds. Eat these 10 minutes before you begin the main course. They will be high in both fat and protein, and fat and protein will slow down the digestion of the carbohydrates in the main course so that you don’t experience sharp insulin spikes, which is what you want. They will also increase satiety so that you end up eating less.

The worst thing to eat first is bread. That will do the opposite — cause a tremendous insulin spike and make you eat even more than you need to.

So get into the habit of first eating a handful of mixed nuts and seeds when you sit down to eat — before anything else.

No Salt

Nuts

I’ve recently changed my strategy with nuts. All the health studies show that eating nuts with prudent quantity is very good for your health and may in fact stabilize your weight. Nuts are high in protein, good fats, and many minerals.

My take on nuts has been I wanted to eat a small quantify of walnuts each day, as walnuts are the one nut high with omega 3 fat, and indeed walnuts are a good choice if you eat but one type of nut.

But then I looked at the nutritional profile of walnuts compared to almonds, pecans, and Brazil nuts. What I discovered was that these other nuts can be very high in nutrients that are not so deep with walnuts. For instance, when compared to walnuts, almonds are exceedingly high in B2, B3, Vitamin E (exceptional), phosphorous, fiber, and comparatively low in fat. Pecans are high in B1, manganese (exceptional), and zinc (exceptional). And Brazil nuts are all-stars when it comes to selenium — a single Brazil nut gives you all the daily selenium you need.

So I decided to divide my daily nut quotient among not 1 nut, but these 4 nuts in order to have a more well-rounded nut nutrient profile than I had with the single walnut.

So now my daily quotient of nuts includes: 6 almonds, 5 walnut halves, 3 pecans halves, and 1 Brazil nut. That comes to 171 calories — same as before with only walnuts — but this diversification has much broader and therefore better nutrition.

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