If high cholesterol concerns you, you're probably well-versed in the foods to avoid—eggs, bacon, butter, beef, and coconut oil, to name a handful. But in addition to eliminating things from your diet, you can also supplement it with healthy foods that actually help lower your cholesterol. One such example is a surprising nut that was just highlighted in a new research paper.
Pecans can help lower cholesterol, new research finds.
A new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutritionfound that swapping daily snack foods for pecans "improved cholesterol levels and enhanced overall diet quality," according to a press release.
To arrive at these findings, researchers in the Penn State Department of Nutritional Sciences enlisted 138 adults aged 25 to 70 who had one or more criteria for metabolic syndrome, which included abdominal obesity, high triglycerides (the most common type of fat in the body that usually comes from butter, oils, and excess calories), low HDL ("good" cholesterol), high blood pressure, and high fasting blood glucose (a potential indicator of diabetes).
Participants were then divided into two equal groups—one who consumed their regular diet and one who ate two ounces of pecans daily in place of their usual snacks—and evaluated via vascular health data and blood work at the start and end of the 12-week study period. Results showed the following reductions in the pecan group:
- Total cholesterol
- LDL ("bad") cholesterol
- HDL cholesterol
- Ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol and triglycerides
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