- Today, we are here with Mr. Thomas DeLauer,
a.k.a. Mr. Mineral,
to talk about why you might be mixed up
about your mixed nuts.
- Everyone tends to kinda group nuts together.
They're just like, okay, healthy fats, cool.
I can eat a lot of them,
but there's a lot calories so I may not wanna go overboard.
I wanna break them down
into their respective little bad categories
and good categories.
What we've done is we've taken just like a standard
plethora of mixed nuts.
Something that you'll normally find at a grocery store.
Let's start with cashews.
What are you, are you a fan of cashews?
- I love them, I think they taste delicious.
- What if I told you they weren't even a nut?
They're actually a fruit technically.
They're the seed of what's called the cashew apple
and believe it or not,
I'm gonna go out on a limb
and say this is my own personal opinion,
but they're probably one of the most inflammatory nuts
that you can eat, if you wanna call it a nut.
They're actually a member of the poison ivy family.
If you think about the response you get
when you get poison ivy on your skin.
You're getting that inflammatory response.
Well, it's not like you're getting poison ivy
on the inside of your body,
but you're still having somewhat
of an inflammatory response.
- That makes sense, wow.
- If you're doing like an autoimmune paleo diet,
it's called, where you're really removing certain foods
out of the diet and stuff like that just to try to see
what foods cause some triggers of inflammation,
cashews are one of the first ones
that you should completely eliminate
and one of the last ones you should reintroduce
because they're so inflammatory.
- All right, let's go into almonds.
Now, I actually have something interesting
to say about almonds.
At Jigsaw Health, we were wondering, you know,
everybody says almonds have a lot of Magnesium in them
or they're a good source of Magnesium
if you're trying to get that through food.
We sent a bag of sprouted organic almonds in for testing
to find out how much Magnesium these things really do have.
There's 71.1 milligrams per ounce of Magnesium in almonds,
but that's not really the interesting thing.
We found out there's also Calcium in almonds
and more Calcium than there is Magnesium.
For example, there's 104 milligrams per ounce
of Calcium in almonds.
So, you're actually getting more Calcium than Magnesium
when you eat almonds.
- That's essentially almost canceling each other out,
because you have Magnesium and Calcium are usually competing
against each other, so if you have more Calcium,
you have a net positive of Calcium.
Then, we've got macadamia nuts.
Macadamia nuts, I'm biased because--
- I love these things.
- Yeah, they're awesome.
For the sake of mechanical digestion,
what I mean by mechanical digestion is
how hard it literally is to break down mechanically.
Does it-- - Okay.
- Does it grind up easily?
Does it leave little chunks when you grind it up?
They break down very, very easily and there's no skin,
so it's easy to digest.
But you know what the main thing
that I like most about these?
They are an equal ratio of one-to-one of Omega 6
and Omega 3 fatty acids.
You get a nice balance of alpha-linolenic acid
and there's CLA.
You get that nice equal balance
and you're not having a spike in inflammation
when you eat them that you typically get
when you kinda overindulge on nuts in general.
- Well, and almonds are, they're pretty inflammatory
as nuts go.
Isn't that right. - Exactly, definitely.
- Macadamia nuts, these things taste good in everything,
so great snack choice.
Moving on to pumpkin seeds.
What do you think about these little devils?
- They are devils.
I call them zombie seeds.
The reason I call them zombie seeds is simply
because they are one of the only foods
that gets more and more nutritious
and nutrient-dense, as they age.
Even after the seed is picked and it's completely stored,
after like five, six months,
it can actually increase in protein value
and it can increase in nutrient density.
They thrive when they're dead, just like zombies.
- All right, moving onto to pecans.
What do we got with these guys?
- I don't like them.
- They taste good. - They do taste good.
- In pecan pie.
- Yeah, but they're like a six to one ratio
of Omega 6 to Omega 3.
The thing, I will say the thing about them is like
if you ever chew a pecan,
you notice it turns into sort of a paste in your mouth,
rather than getting kinda gritty like almonds would.
Much easier to digest in that sense.
- Easier to break down. - Exactly
and they make delicious pies.
- They do (giggling), all right, and last but not least,
these are some of my least favorite nuts, by the way,
I just have to say.
- I appreciate the candor. - Yeah.
Brazil nuts, these guys, the things that everyone
at a cocktail party is picking around
and you know that's true.
Tell us about these.
- They are too high in Selenium
and Selenium is a mineral that is very, very necessary.
A trace mineral that's very necessary for thyroid function.
You get your daily value of Selenium
in just a couple of brazil nuts,
which isn't saying much because they're the size
of Texas anyway, but still it's a good thing
for your thyroid.
As always, keep in locked in here at Jigsaw Health.
See you soon. - See you soon.
I'm starving, can we eat these now?
- Sure, just be careful of the cashews.
- I'll go with the macadamia nut.
- Try them anyway.
Live on the edge.
(crunching)
(spitting) - yeah,
(giggling) I can't watch.
- Can I get a glass of water please.
(background laughter)
- I can't watch that.
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