"Are Baruka Nuts the Healthiest Nut?"
There is a new nut on the market called baru almonds
branded as “barukas,” or just baru nuts.
Technically, it isn’t a nut but a seed that's native to the Brazilian Savannah,
known as the Cerrado, which is sadly now among the most
threatened ecosystems in the world.
Over the last 30 years, extensive cattle ranching and feed crop production
to fatten said cattle have destroyed much of this ecosystem.
So, hey, if we can make it profitable not to cut down the native trees
by selling baru nuts, for example, then that could be good
for the ecosystem’s health. But what about our health?
Although baru nuts are popular and widely consumed,
few studies report on their biological properties.
They do have a lot of polyphenol phytonutrients,
presumably accounting for their high antioxidant activity,
and 90%of the phytonutrients are present in the peel.
So, are they nutritious? Sure.
But do they have any special health benefits
(and not just for the treatment of chubby mice)?
Groups fed baru nuts showed lower cholesterol, supposedly indicating
that they have a great potential for dietary use in
preventing and controlling cholesterol problems.
But their groups were rats, and that was compared to lard.
Basically anything lowers your cholesterol compared to eating lard.
Nevertheless, there haven’t been any reports about the effect
of baru almonds consumption on human health, until this study.
A randomized, controlled study of humans found that eating less
than an ounce a day for six weeks led to a 9% drop in LDL cholesterol.
Twenty grams would be about 15 nuts or a palmful.
Like many other nut studies, even though the research subjects
were told to add nuts to their regular diets, there was no weight gain,
presumably because nuts are so filling, you inadvertently
cut down on other foods throughout the day.
How good is a 9.4% drop in LDL?
Well, that’s the kind of drop you can get from regular almonds,
though macadamias and pistachios may work even better,
but those were at much higher doses.
So, it appeared that 20 grams of baru nuts worked as well as
73 grams of almonds, and so on a per serving basis,
or a per calorie basis, baru nuts really did seem to be special.
Now there are lower dose nut studies showing
similar or even better results.
Here people were given 25 grams of almonds for just four weeks
and got about a 6% drop.
And in this study, people were given just 10 grams of almonds a day,
I mean we’re talkin’ just seven individual almonds a day,
and got more like a 30% drop in the same time frame as the baru nuts.
Three times better at half the dose with regular almonds.
The biggest reason we’re more confident in regular almonds
is that studies have been done over and over,
more than a dozen randomized controlled trials,
whereas in the only other cholesterol trial of baru nuts
there was no significant benefit at all for LDL cholesterol,
even at the same 20-gram dose given for even longer—
a period of eight weeks. That’s a bummer.
The primary reason I would suggest choosing other nuts instead,
though, is that you can’t get baru nuts raw.
They contain certain compounds that have to be inactivated by heat
before human consumption.
So, the reason raw nuts are preferable is because of advanced
glycation end products (AGEs), so-called glycotoxins,
which are known to contribute to increased
oxidative stress and inflammation.
Glycotoxins are naturally present in uncooked animal-derived foods,
but then dry-heat cooking like grilling can make things worse.
The three highest levels recorded are bacon, broiled hot dogs,
and roasted barbequed chicken skin (nothing comes close to that.)
Chicken McNuggets come in here, but, anyway, any foods high in fat
and protein can create AGEs at high enough temperatures.
So, although plant foods tend to contain relatively few AGEs,
even after cooking, there are some high-fat, high-protein plant foods.
For example, boiled tofu, like in a soup, is down here,
but the same serving size of broiled tofu is up here.
Now again, with most plant foods it’s not at all a problem.
Like here’s a raw apple, and here’s a baked apple.
It doesn’t really matter since it’s not high fat or high protein.
I was surprised that veggie burgers were so low,
even when baked or fried.
But nuts and seeds are up in tofu territory, especially when roasted,
which is why I would recommend raw nuts and seeds
and nut and seed butters whenever you have a choice.