Eat Nuts For Healthy Heart & Energy

Eat Nuts for Energy and for Your Heart

Nuts have fiber, protein, and minerals, and are a great energy food. So are nut buttes. The protein and fat keep you full and stabilize your blood sugar, while the minerals help your energy and metabolism.

Nut eaters as a rule have significantly lower rates of heart disease than those who don’t eat nuts. Because heart disease can really drain your energy – not to mention shorten or eliminate your life – it makes sense to make nuts and nut butters a part of your energy eating plan.

Truth be told, all nuts make a great snack and all are great energy foods. (I’m not necessarily including the salted peanuts you get at a bar, which are technically a legume anyway, not a nut, and are usually not the best snack for energy or health.) There’s a reason that trail mix – the standard-issue snack food for hikers – contains a ton of nuts (as well as dried fruit such as cranberries). The mixture of the “good” carbs in the dried fruit together with the heart-healthy fat and moderate amount of protein in the nuts makes the perfect food for sustaining energy through a long day on the hiking trials.

Suffice it to say here that 1 ounce (28 g) of almonds (or a smear of almond butter) together with a piece of fruit such as an apple make the perfect energy snack, and is hands-down one of my favorite pre-workout snack. (Come to think of it, it’s pretty darn good after working out, too.)

You can also try mixing 1 ounce of nuts (walnuts, pecans, or almonds) with an equal mount of one of the newer, more exotic berries now available in health food stores, such as goji berries or (my favorite) mung-berries. Or even with good, old-fashioned raisins. Try sprinkling on some dried coconut flakes for even more of an energy boost.