We all love to snack on pecans, but we might not be aware of their real benefits. A new nutrition discovery indicated that a pecan-enriched diet provides a lot of benefits that mainly revolve around heart health. A new study says that eating pecans may actually improve your cholesterol levels; cholesterol is the main suspect in the development of heart disease and stroke. Health experts are working hard to reduce cholesterol levels in arteries by encouraging people to improve their lifestyle choices and to eat healthier.
Pecans lower cholesterol
The research was conducted for eight weeks. All participants were people with a risk of cardiovascular disease. The adults were between the age of 30 and 75. During the eight weeks, all of them ate pecans. The findings revealed that introducing pecans to daily meals revealed a significant improvement for both cholesterol and LDL. Not only that, but it appears that the benefits of pecans outshined many other lifestyle changes. There was a 6% to 9% drop in LDL and a 5% drop in cholesterol for participants.
Jamie Cooper, a professor in the FACS department of nutritional sciences, is one of the authors of the study. He highlighted the success of their research and the excellent results they had:
“This dietary intervention, when put in the context of different intervention studies, was extremely successful. We had some people who actually went from having high cholesterol at the start of the study to no longer being in that category after the intervention.”
Pecan nuts taste delicious, and they are a great snack. Now we know that eating them every day adds benefits to our overall health. Researchers believe that pecans could represent a sustainable manner to improve health in the long term. The study was conducted by UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences researchers, and it can be read in The Journal of Nutrition.
