Ingredients
Nuts and Seeds:
Formulating for Health and Disease Prevention
By Ronald Ross
Watson, Ph.D.,
University of Arizona
College of Public Health
and School of Medicine
The use of plants and plant-based prod- ucts for treatment of diseases is as old as mankind. In the past few decades, there
has been an exponential growth in naturopathic medicine as people consider these
remedies to be a better option for their
health care needs because of the natural origin and reduced side effects. Nuts and seeds
are widely used as a part of this natural approach, either in their crude form or as
preparations thereof, both in traditional and
contemporary medicine and in general
health promotion.
Understanding the complex role of diet,
and nuts and seeds in particular, in chronic
diseases is challenging because a typical diet
provides more than 25,000 bioactive food
constituents, many of which may modify a
multitude of processes related to these diseases. Their numerous individual functions as
well as their combined additive or synergistic
effects are crucial to their beneficial health effects; thus, a food-based research approach is
likely to elucidate more health effects than
studying each individual nutrient in isolation.
Both seeds and nuts (some of which, such
as peanuts, are actually seeds) contain the key
nutrients to create life and protect the life of
a living plant. This article highlights how
these nourishing and protective traits translate into human health. The following insights are based on the book Nuts and Seeds in
Health and Disease Prevention, published by Academic Press in 2011,* as well as studies from
respected journals and published nutrition
facts.
Nuts and Seeds in Heart Disease
Prevention
Although in the past calorie counters have
fretted over the fats in nuts and seeds, the
overall consensus in the scientific world today
is that the fat and other synergistic phyto-
chemicals found in nuts and seeds provide es-
sential nutrients for health, especially heart
health.
