Drop The Potato Chips For Walnuts To Bust Your Mid-Meal Cravings

Adopting a healthy lifestyle is all about small changes in your choice of foods and diet that can make a huge difference in your overall well-being. Instead of a packet of chips, you can try walnuts to curb your mid-meal hunger pangs. This wonder food is not only rich in taste but also packed with health benefits.

A Health Hero

A recent research by Penn State University found that walnuts can promote gut health. Kristina Petersen, assistant research professor at Penn State who has co-authored the research paper published in the Journal of Nutrition, was quoted by Science Daily as saying: “Replacing your usual snack—especially if it’s an unhealthy snack—with walnuts is a small change you can make to improve your diet... Eating two to three ounces (56 grams) of walnuts a day as part of a healthy diet could be a good way to improve gut health and reduce the risk of heart disease.”

Walnuts are rich in folate, Vitamin E, magnesium and essential fatty acids. “Researchers analyzing past studies on the health benefits of walnuts have given us reason to make them a regular part of our diets and, perhaps, to choose them over other nuts,” says Robert H. Shmerling, a senior faculty editor at Harvard Health Publishing. 

A Versatile Food

Walnuts can add extra nutrition, flavour and crunch to any meal. Whether you have them whole with your morning coffee or toast and toss them in your salads, add them in desserts for a nutty bite or combine them with parsley to make a creamy pesto—there’s so much you can do with walnuts. If you aren’t particularly fond of the flavour, you can crush them and add them to a sauce to make it thick. 

Beauty Benefits

Loaded with antioxidants which help combat free radicals that damage skin, you should include walnuts in your beauty routine. A 2011 article in Self quotes Stephanie Clarke and Willow Jarosh, registered dieticians and co-owners of C&J Nutrition in Manhattan, US, as saying, “Walnuts offer healthy Omega-3 fats that strengthen the membranes of your skin cells, locking in moisture and nutrients that keep it plump and glowing and keeping out toxins that can damage skin cells.”

You can make homemade beauty recipes with walnuts or go for products that include walnut extracts or walnut oil to give your skin a healthy glow.