CONTEXT
Nuts have been part of the human diet for thousands or potentially hundreds of thousands of years so when someone comes up to you and says they are obesogenic or fattening, your alarm bells should go off as to the sanity of the person making such a claim. Modern nutritionism has given birth to a crusade against tasty foods and the same hedonic senses that helped us find food during our evolution which is regressive. Let us look at what the science says
ACTUAL CALORIES IN ALMONDS
- In this randomized study(1) conducted in humans, it was found that the calories of almonds are as follows:
- Whole Almonds: 4.42 calories per gram
- Whole Roasted Almonds: 4.42 calories per gram
- Chopped Almonds: 5.04 calories per gram
- Almond Butter: 6.53 calories per gram
Not so high, is it? In other words, the caloric load depends on small the particle size of almonds is.
CHRONIC CONSUMPTION OF NUTS
In a more practical scenario, people eat a lot more nuts than what is usually stated in the study. In this study(2), participants were fed 10 weeks of 60g of almonds daily versus 10 weeks of no almonds. The participants were given no instruction on how to include the almonds in the diet. What they found out was that the participants had no change in weight while potentially improving cardiovascular risk factors. This was primarily due to the nuts ability to displace out unhealthy foods from the diet.
OVERFEEDING ON PEANUTS
What about, "I can eat a lot of nuts in one sitting" scenario? Interestingly, this was tested in a study(3) by overfeeding healthy subjects nearly 47% above their caloric needs for 2 weeks compared to candy, they found no substantial increase in fat mass while the sugary candy group did gain weight. The insulin levels were also higher in the sugary candy group.
OUR TAKEAWAY
Paradoxical to the common nutrition myth, regular nut consumption can lead to fat loss due to their higher satiety. Our Energy Pods can contain 20-30g of extremely high-quality nuts(eg. almonds with less phytate content) per Pod which provides adequate dosage that has been shown in several long term studies(4) to provide beneficial health and body weight outcomes. It's important to note that these benefits at this dosage are observed disregarding the level of processing of nuts.
OUR APPLICATION
CITATIONS
GLOSSARY
- Leucine: A dietary amino acid that can stimulate muscle protein synthesis
- Cholecalciferol: Vitamin D3, also produced when skin is exposed to sunlight
FAHAD AHMAD
Fahad is the founder of Ketogeek and hosts the Ketogeek Podcast, a world class health show about food, nutrition and health. He is into resistance training, Ashtanga yoga, calisthenics and various forms of training styles. Armed with a idealistic goals distilled in a world of realism, his goal is to help the world make a better place. He leads a life of extreme generalism or as he describes it, 'The Renaissance Lifestyle'.
“It never ceases to amaze me how prosaic, pedestrian, unimaginative people can persistently pontificate about classical grammatical structure as though it's fucking rocket science. These must be the same people who hate Picasso, because he couldn't keep the paint inside the lines and the colors never matched the numbers.”
― Abbe Diaz