Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington has officially published results from its latest study, which revealed that adolescents and young adults who consumed walnuts and other nuts had a lower prevalence for obesity when compared with those who didn’t consume any nuts. To reach upon this conclusion, the researching team would study data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The NHANES survey, on its part, offered responses from more than 19,000 adolescents (12 – 19 years old) and young adults (20 – 39 years old). This it did to help the reader better understand the potential associations between consumption of walnuts and other nuts, with measures of obesity including relative fat mass (RFM), which happens to be a validated tool for estimating body fat percent and regional fat composition. Anyway, the results showed how young women consuming only walnuts had a significantly lower prevalence of obesity when compared to non-nut consumers. Having said so, the stated association was not detected among young men, adolescent boys, or adolescent girls. Furthermore, the researchers learned that adolescent girls and young women, who consumed walnuts only, or other nuts, had a significantly lower RFM compared to non-nuts consumers.
All in all, only young males in the walnut and other nut groups showed an inverse association with RFM, as compared to the no nuts group. On a more holistic note, though, average nut consumption across the surveyed population group was low, considering more than 76% of adolescents and 69% of young adults reported near to or no daily nut consumption. On top of that, in the cases where walnuts were actually consumed, adolescents would only eat about 2g/day, whereas on the other hand, young adults would have 4g/day, which is far below the recommended intake for nuts of 2 – 3 ounces (56 – 85g) per week or 1 to 1.5 ounces (30g) per day, respectively.
“While additional research is needed, these results showed that food should not be judged based on calories alone. The addition of nuts, like walnuts, as a part of a healthy eating pattern may help lower the risk of obesity,” saif Dr. Carla Miller, PhD, RD, Professor of Nutrition at Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington. “Whether it is a handful as a snack or part of a meal, even in small amounts, nuts, including walnuts, can and should be a part of a nutritious diet to support well-being.”
Not just weight management, though, a separate multi-school randomized controlled trial, studying 771 healthy teenagers aged 11 to 16, discovered that participants who consumed 30 grams of walnuts per day (1 ounce or 1 handful) for six months had improved neuropsychological scores for attention, fluid intelligence. This included better problem solving, quick reasoning skills, and more.
Joining that is a novel study of 80 healthy university students aged 18 to 35, who ate 2 ounces of walnuts a day for 16 weeks, compared to those who did not eat walnuts. Here, the former group was found to be successful when it came down to mitigating negative changes in self-reported mental health scores, as well as scores related to stress and depression during a particularly stressful academic period. It turned out this way because students who ate walnuts experienced an increase in metabolic markers that protect against stress and a decrease in those that are linked with stress. Apart from it, while the finding still awaits validation at scale, researchers would discover that the walnuts-consuming group also saw an improvement in sleep scores that covered areas like getting to sleep, sleep quality, awakening from sleep, and behavior following wakefulness.
