Nut Consumption and Blood Lipid Levels

Abstract

Nut consumption improves blood lipid levels in a dose-related manner, particularly among subjects with higher LDL-C or with lower BMI.

Health Benefits of Nut Consumption

“…When compared with control diets, walnut-rich diets resulted in a significantly greater decrease in total and LDL-cholesterol concentrations, with weighted mean decreases of 10.3 and 9.2 mg/dL, respectively. The overall result indicated that the walnut diets compared with the control diets were associated with a 6.7% greater decrease in LDL-cholesterol concentration, which concurs with the mean 7% decrease reported with various nut types in the pooled analysis [69]. HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides were not significantly affected by walnut diets more than by control diets.…”

“…A Mediterranean diet supplemented with 30 g of mixed nuts (walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts) per day also showed beneficial effects on the lipid profile compared with advice on a low-fat diet in diabetic and non diabetic participants in the PREDIMED study, a randomized trial of dietary intervention for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease [80]. Of note, two randomized trials that used cashews or walnuts [81] and mixed nuts [82] compared to control diets in obese patients with the metabolic syndrome failed to show the predictable cholesterol lowering-effect, which supports the findings of the pooled analysis [69] (Figure 3) regarding the inverse association between cholesterol responses to nut feeding and BMI. There may be a mechanistic explanation for decreased lipid responsiveness to dietary intervention in patients with the metabolic syndrome.…”

“…Total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol decreased significantly by 12% and 18%, respectively in the healthy subjects studied. Since then, over 40 clinical studies have been conducted assessing the effects of nut-enriched diets versus isoenergetic, usually healthy comparator diets, on serum lipids and lipoproteins, as reviewed up to December 2004 in a pooled analysis of 25 intervention trials using different nut types [69] and through May 2008 in a meta-analysis of 13 feeding studies with walnuts [70]. …”

“…Although the degree of dietary control was variable, ranging from being tightly controlled ( i.e. , all foods provided by the investigators) to simply providing dietary advice to free-living participants eating on their own, the results have been consistent in showing a cholesterol-lowering effect of regular nut intake, usually without any significant effect on triglycerides or HDL cholesterol [2,13,17,18,19,20,69,70]. …”

“…Recently the findings of a pooled analysis of 1,284 observations contributed by 583 unique participants from 25 clinical studies performed with different nuts, including peanuts, and conducted in seven different countries have been reported [69]. The results show a dose-response cholesterol-lowering effect and indicate that, for an average daily intake of 67 g of nuts (roughly equivalent to 20% of energy), the mean estimated reductions of total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol were 11 mg/dL (5%) and 10 mg/dL (7%), respectively.…”