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Health Benefits of Nuts

Almonds, walnuts, pistachios, pine nuts, hazelnuts, and many other nuts offer impressive health benefits. What’s more, they’re delicious additions to your raw-foods menu, but only if you soak them for a few hours (or overnight) before eating.

As noted in my article Why You Need to Soak Your Nuts, despite their health benefits, these crunchy little guys are very complex foods. They contain phytic, hydrocyanic, and oxalic acids that can bring on bad digestion and consequently cause poor assimilation of the nuts’ valuable vitamins and minerals. Soaking nutsis your ticket to preserving nuts’ nutritional power and making them easily digestible. You’ll find recommendations on how to soak nuts in the article referenced above. 

Let’s look now at some specific benefits you’ll find in the more popular kinds of nuts...

Health Benefits of Almonds. Rich in potassium, phosphorus, and iron, with big doses of vitamins B and E, almonds make us wiser, younger, healthier. Almond kernels offer magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, copper, iron, manganese, and zinc. They help maintain brain activity, improve vision, counter obesity, and help deal with sleep disorders. I ordered my almonds from the company called Home Grown Almonds, and I liked them a lot.

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Health Benefits of Pistachios. This under-rated, rather cute-looking nut is a nutritional treasure trove. Here you’ll find useful amino acids, unsaturated and saturated fatty acids (oleic, linoleic, palmitic, linolenic, palmitoleic, stearic acid) that are crucial for our health, carbohydrates, lutein and zeaxanthin), B vitamins, vitamin E, glycerides, copper, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, iron, and more. 

Both almonds and pistachios find use in cosmetology as rejuvenating components. Their oils contribute to the long-term preservation of youth, enhancing cell regeneration.

Health Benefits of Walnuts. Rich in vitamins of groups B, C, E, and P, as well as in carotenes, salts of iron and cobalt, tannins, and in unsaturated fatty acids, the walnut is justly called the fruit of life. The shell of a walnut nut contains 2500 mg of vitamin C! Just two walnuts a day and your body will get its daily requirement of selenium, which helps to prevent premature aging.

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Pine Nuts Benefits. The pine nut is veritable magic. It helps slow the body’s aging process. Pine nuts carry phosphorous, iodine, zinc, magnesium, vitamins B1, B2, B3, vitamin E, C, K, most of the required amino acids such as oleic acid and tryptophan, lutein, and many others. The pine nut is a superioraddition to your healthy diet. It’s also known to have a hypoallergenic effect.

Hazelnut Health Benefits. This under-used gem is a unique gift of nature. Its luxurious composition—60% oil, 20% protein, numerous vitamins, minerals, and surprisingly few carbohydrates—makes it a number-one choice for your healthy diet. It contains paclitaxel—an anti-cancer substance that makes hazelnut a preventive agent for oncological disease. Buy your hazelnuts exceptionally unpurified. If the hazelnut is without its peel for a while, its useful substances may lose their valuable properties. 

Are Cashew Nuts Raw? You cannot find truely raw cashews at the store, because they are not safe to eat. Cashews much be roasted to neutralize the urushiol, the very same chemical that is present in poison ivy. The "raw" cashews, that you see in stores, are actually slightly steamed. It's believed that cashew nuts have a wide range of beneficial properties. For example, Japanese researchers have proved anti-bacterial properties of cashews and their benefits for teeth and gums. In India, cashew is referred to as the food of gods. But they are not favoured in the raw food community.

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Macadamia Nuts Health Benefits. The oil of these nuts contains a whole complex of unique, useful substances: fatty acids, vitamins, proteins, trace elements, and more. It offers antioxidant, moisturizing, nourishing, and rejuvenating effects. The macadamia nut consists of such precious components as natural proteins, vegetable fats, carbohydrates, vegetable sugar, all kinds of vitamins and minerals, organic acids, etc. Manganese, present in the macadamia, is one an important element that contributes to bone formation, participates in breaking down cholesterol and carbohydrates, and is important for our enzyme system. 

Brazil Nuts Benefits. This delicious nut will bestow on you energy, clear skin, and reduced risk for heart disease and cancer. It will help cleanse your blood of cholesterol and help control your weight. Just two nuts a day will replenish your vital energy. The Brazil nut is rich in selenium and the presence of the amino acid methionine promotes the absorption of selenium and promotes production of antioxidant glutathione.

Benefits of Wild Jungle Peanuts. Don’t buy regular supermarket peanuts. Go for wild jungle peanuts every time. The difference…they’re shade-grown in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Hand-harvested and sun-dried in the shell, these are heirloom nuts that have been preserved for hundreds of years. They offer heart-healthy oleic acid, plentiful protein, plus a remarkable array of other nutrients and minerals: magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, and all nine essential amino acids, including methionine, making them a complete source of nutrition.

Wild jungle peanuts are free of the aflatoxin fungus that plagues other peanuts and causes liver cancer. They’re also processed at verified raw temperatures (under 118°F) in certified organic facilities. You couldn’t ask for a food that’s better for the body, better for the planet. 

Nut Allergies. All these incredible gifts of nature strengthen our immunity, benefit the brain, improve the blood, and cleanse our organs. Still, some are concerned about nut allergies. My advice: Check out my article about Nut Allergies.

Best Nuts to Eat. The ones you like the most. 

My favorite nuts: pistachios, wild jungle peanuts, pine nuts. Whatever the variety, I always soak nuts before eating. In fact, I’ll never eat even one unsoaked nut. Each evening before bed, I take two handfuls of the nuts I want to eat tomorrow, and I soak them in distilled water till morning. The next day I’ll eat them with my freshly squeezed juice. More on juicing in How to Juice at Home. Some might say that’s too many nuts in a day, or bad food combining. But this has been my standard breakfast since 1995 and it’s been working great for me. No digestive troubles. No weight problems. Find the best nut combination that works for you!