Why do nuts have so many calories

Nuts increase the amount of calories we burn: Not only do we not absorb all the calories in nuts, but eating nuts may also increase the amount of energy and fat we burn. It's thought this may partially be explained by the protein and unsaturated fats in nuts, although we don't yet know exactly how this occurs.

Increases in the number of calories burnt can help us maintain or lose weight. Nuts help us feel full for longer: As well as fat, nuts are rich in protein and fibre. So, nuts help to keep us feeling full after we eat them, meaning we're likely to eat less at later meals. Recent studies have also suggested providing people with nuts helps improve the overall quality of the types of foods they eat.

This may be because nuts replace "junk foods" as snacks. People who eat nuts have healthier lifestyles in general: We can't rule out the idea that eating nuts is just a sign of a healthier lifestyle. However, randomised controlled trials , which can control for lifestyle factors like eating habits, still find no negative effect on body weight when people eat nuts. This means the favourable effects of nuts are not just the result of nut eaters having healthier lifestyles — the nuts themselves play a role.

Overall, the evidence suggests nuts are a healthy snack that can provide us with many of the nutrients our bodies need. We can confidently include the recommended 30g of nuts a day in a healthy diet, without worrying about the effect they will have on our waistlines. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. For example, a 30g serving of raw cashews or pistachios contains around 15g of fat , whereas the same amount of raw macadamias contains around 22g of fat.

There are different kinds of fats in our diet and some are better for us than others. Nuts contain mainly monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. They can help lower cholesterol when we eat them in place of saturated fats. The type of fats present varies between nuts. For example, walnuts are rich in polyunsaturated fats, whereas other types of nuts such as hazelnuts and macadamias have more monounsaturated fat. Even if the type of fat in nuts is good for us, they are still high in fat and calories.

We see a similar pattern in clinical studies that asked people to include nuts in their diets and then looked at the effects on body weight. A review of more than 30 studies examined the effects of eating nuts on body weight. It did not find people who ate nuts had increased their body weight, body mass index BMI , or waist circumference, compared to a control group of people who did not eat nuts.

Read more: Got high cholesterol? Take a look at data from the Agricultural Research Service in which researchers examined how many of the calories in walnuts, almonds, and pistachios the body uses versus how many are actually in these nuts. Across the board, the body used fewer calories than were actually in the nuts.

For pistachios, calorie uptake was So in that ounce of pistachios, your body would only use And in one ounce of walnuts, of the calories were available to the body while in almonds, the difference was calories versus roughly calories. Plus, because nuts are so satiating, they reduce how much you eat that day. His research shows that nuts may even make an energy-restricted diet more palatable, which could improve compliance to that diet. What else you should love about nuts?

In other words, your body will absorb all of the calories in those nut butters. Li, M. That can lower blood cholesterol and has even been shown to activate fat-burning processes in the body.