Adding pistachio nuts to your daily diet could be an easy way to improve cholesterol levels, say researchers from Turkey, the world's fourth biggest pistachio nut producer.

The US is currently the number two producer of pistachios in the world, with annual production of about 136,000 metric tons (302m lbs). Exports of the nuts are worth almost $100m every year with Europe getting the lion's share of the exported nuts (71 percent).

The new study, published in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases (Vol. 16, pp. 202-209), randomly assigned 44 healthy volunteers with an average age of 33 and a BMI of 24.5 kg per square meter to a regular diet (control) or the test diet with 20 percent of the daily calorific intake from pistachio nuts.

After three weeks of the diet, the researchers, from the Medical Faculty of the Harran University in Turkey, found that plasma levels of total cholesterol decreased by 12 percent for the pistachio group, compared to baseline, and HDL cholesterol levels increased by 26 percent.



Posted by: Emily    Source

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