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Nutty health

Posted by LauraJ in Health news No comments»

The UK has one of the highest average cholesterol concentrations in the world, with as many as two thirds of UK adults – up to 32 million people – living with blood cholesterol above levels that the Government recommends are safe.

So little wonder that any product, ingredient or scientific breakthrough claiming to remedy the situation is big news, and potentially big business for the health industry.

And remedy cholesterol levels is exactly what a new research paper has suggested pistachio nuts have the capacity to do. 

Published by the Journal of Nutrition and covered by the Daily Telegraph among a number of national and online titles, the research found that consuming as little as a handful of pistachio nuts a day could destroy bad cholesterol, ward of heart disease, and have implications for other serious conditions such as cancer.

Research participants ate three differing diets for a month long period – a standard cholesterol-lowering diet containing no nuts, and two other similar food regimes with 1.5 and 3 ounces of pistachios respectively.

It is believed that the nuts, which contain antioxidants – a word seemingly far from both supportive and disparaging headlines alike – including lutein, beta-carotene and gamma-tocopherol, increased antioxidant levels and lowered cholesterol concentrations in the blood upon consumption by the test groups.

Professor of nutrition at the Pennsylvania State University, Professor Penny Kris-Etherton said of the study: “Our previous study showed the benefits of pistachios in lowering lipids and lipoproteins, which are a risk factor for heart disease.

“Our results suggest that a heart-healthy diet including pistachios contributes to a decrease in serum-oxidised-LDL levels, in part through cholesterol lowering, and also due to an added benefit of the antioxidants.”

For the natural health industry, this research presents opportunities from a food retail and product development perspective.  And in these challenging times, such news is always welcome.