Nuts in general are a healthy addition to any diet. A small snack of pecans on a regular basis is a good way to increase your overall health. You may have heard of Vitamin E, but what you might not know is that there are many different forms of it. This is one of the issues with taking a multivitamin, you aren’t getting all the forms of each nutrient. But one of the forms of Vitamin E, gamma-tocopherls, is found in large quantities in pecans and is thought to promote heart health. A study published in the Journal Of Nutrition found that after eating Pecans, LDL cholesterol levels fell. A study in the June04 issue of Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry found that pecans had the highest antioxidant capacity of all nuts. Antioxidants are widely believed to promote better health.
Pecans actually have 19 different vitamins and minerals, making them a type of multivitamin in and of themselves. They also contain fiber. Of course they are high in fat. But fat isn’t a bad thing. Too much fat is a bad thing. Foods high in fat are often high in many of the nutrients our bodies need to stay healthy. A lot of low fat diets are in fact low-nutrition diets. Additionally, a handful of pecans is great medicine snack because they fill you up and don’t lead to binge eating like highly processed snacks are designed to.