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This article is from the WebMD News Archive
It's Official: Nuts Are Good for Your Heart
July 17, 2003 -- Nut lovers now have even more reason to come out of their shells. Labels on nut products will now be allowed to advertise that a handful a day of most nuts may be enough to lower the risk of heart disease.
This week the FDA approved the first qualified health claim for almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios, walnuts, and peanuts for use in advertising and package labels. Packages of nut products that meet the FDA's requirements will now be able to carry the following claim:
"Scientific evidence suggests but does not prove that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease."
An ounce and a half serving of nuts is about a third of a cup or a small handful.
Only nut-based food products, such as plain nuts and some nut butters, that meet the FDA's fat and nutrition requirements will be able to carry the label, not items such as chocolate-covered nuts or ice creams with added nuts.
In approving the qualified health claim, the FDA says there is good scientific evidence to support the claim that eating nuts reduces the risk of heart disease, but the evidence is not entirely conclusive. It's part of a new FDA program that ranks scientific evidence behind health claims of food products.
"This new initiative will better protect consumers from making uninformed or misinformed choices about their diet and nutrition, but giving consumers better information about the health consequences of these choices," says FDA commissioner, Mark B. McClellan, MD, PhD, in a news release.
McClellan says the FDA review process for making qualified claims will reward companies that make healthier products and help distinguish them from those who make false or misleading health claims.
How Nutty Should You Be?
Lowering Heart Disease Risk in a Nutshell
Although nuts aren't exactly low in calories or fat, nuts contain high levels of unsaturated fats that are known to lower "bad" LDL cholesterol levels in the blood and reduce the risk of heart disease.
"Our epidemiological studies have shown eating about one ounce of nuts every day will reduce the risk of heart disease in the long run by 30%," says Frank Hu, MD, PhD, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.
"Almost all types of nuts have high amounts of mono- and polyunsaturated fats, and when you substitute this kind of good fat for carbohydrates and saturated fat, your LDL will go down."
"When you put these pieces together, I think the evidence is very consistent and very strong, but it doesn't meet the criteria for statins [cholesterol-lowering drugs]," says Hu.
In fact, Hu says it's nearly impossible for foods like nuts to meet the FDA's requirements for unqualified health claims because it's difficult to conduct trials comparing foods to placebo, and it takes many years for foods to produce beneficial health effects.
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