Postby Harriet » Sat Jun 30, 2018 11:39 am
True, LadyM - and they can have crunch! Comparing an oil to nuts seems odd, except in the sense of comparing their fats. Nuts have nutrients and fiber to offer since they are the whole food. They surprisingly don't cause weight gain like oils, although that probably doesn't give us the green light to load up on them, lol. They boost our bodies' ability to take up fat-soluble carotenoids from greens, so that the greens we eat with a bit of nuts are even better for us. A study a year earlier than that one, also done in Spain ("Crossover Study" by Damasceno), had 3 groups replace regular oil with either EVOO, walnuts or almonds. Cholesterol was lowered better with nuts than with olive oil. Btw, between walnuts and almonds, walnuts did a little better on total chol. and almonds a little better on LDL. It took a month for the nuts group to lower chol by about 7 percent. I don't think they charted exactly how much each group ate of nuts - just that they replaced.
Harmony, Extra Virgin Olive Oil is better to reach for than the vegetable oils and better than butter and other saturated fats. It doesn't cause as much of a spike in inflammation as even regular olive oil, maybe because it somehow still retains a bit of the phytonutrients of the olive. I haven't seen a study directly comparing EVOO to coconut oil for heart health. Coconut oil has a different benefit in its digestion, but I don't know how much that would matter for cardio issues.
A Mediterranean diet is way ahead of "standard western diet", of course. But I think the olive oil's claim to fame in it, is probably going to rest in how well it goes along with the Med diet's vegetables/beans, whole grains and balsamic vinegar, rather than its own benefits. If it has historically gotten people to eat more of those, that's something that deserves our attention.
I want to do more of whirring some walnuts, for instance, into salad dressings in the bullet and having them ready. But when I'm in a hurry I sprinkle some chopped nuts over a big salad and call it done, with just a little of some prepared dressing. It can be a totally unhealthy one sometimes - more than once I have used part of a Chick-Fil-A sauce mini-tub. Now, that can't be right. lol. i don't think I'll look up that nutritional profile.