How many nuts do you eat each day? Did you know that eating a handful of nuts daily is very healthy? In this article, you will find 10 recipes and tips on how to incorporate nuts into your diet easily.
The Public Health Agency of Catalonia advises eating between 20 to 25 grams of nuts daily. Nuts are rich in proteins, minerals, healthy fats, vitamins, and protective phytochemical compounds. As a consequence, they have a high nutritional content and their consumption is very beneficial to health.
BENEFITS FOR HEALTH
A number of studies, such as the one conducted at Harvard in 2013, have corroborated that high consumption of nuts correlates with reduced mortality and a lower risk of suffering some cancer types, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases or diabetes.
In addition, nuts are very filling; thus, although they are high-calorie foodstuffs, their consumption is not correlated to weight increase. Now, the Health Channel of the Generalitat de Catalunya emphasises the importance of eating unsalted, unsweetened nuts. Moreover, they note that the healthiest nuts are those eaten raw or lightly toasted. Finally, they state that we must avoid fried nuts since the oils used are not healthy and the industry adds lots of salt.
HOW TO INCLUDE NUTS IN YOUR MENU?
First of all, we want to offer some very easy tips for increasing the daily intake of nuts (source: Health Channel):
1. Add nuts to your breakfast: mixed with yoghurt and fruit in a bowl, for example.
2. Add them to salads: hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, peanuts, pistachios, etc. Let your imagination fly!
3. Use them for snacking between meals: As an afternoon snack or mid-morning snack.
4. Include them in more or less elaborated recipes: broccoli and almonds, lentil patê and walnuts, romesco sauce, pesto, etc.
5. Make patês and spreads with them: You can also buy or make nuts spread to eat with bread, for example.
* Although peanuts are legumes, their nutritional composition is similar to that of nuts, so they are often treated as such.
By the way, we have another piece of good news about nuts: we Catalans are lucky to live in an area where we can enjoy local, high-quality nuts. Let’s make the most of the almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, and pine nuts of our land!
10 DELICIOUS RECIPES WITH NUTS
We want to share with you a collection of finger-licking recipes to give you a good variety of resources to include nuts in your daily meals:
We hope you find all these resources useful and be more aware of nuts in your daily diet. We encourage you to eat a handful every day.
Remember: if you take care of yourself, you take care of the planet too!
Come visit the Menja, Actua, Impacta [Eat, Act, Impact] exhibition and learn more about sustainable and healthy eating. You will not regret it!!
