Why nuts can help decrease hunger – as well as boost your brain health and longevity. Dieticians also know this, and many of the most popular diets use nuts as a staple.

The Ketogenic Diet

The Ketogenic diet aims to put your body in a state of ketosis (all energy comes from burning fat stores). You achieve this by severely restricting carbs and eating plenty of healthy fats and proteins. This forces your body to tap into it’s fat stores for fuel.

Macadamia nuts are perfect for a ketogenic diet – they are 75% fat which makes them an easy, diet-friendly snack that can keep you in a state of ketosis while tasting good.

Almonds and Cashews are considered “semi-keto” which means you can eat them on a keto diet, but you should probably do so in a ratio that favors higher fat food like macadamias.

The Mediterranean Diet

People who lived in countries around the Mediterranean (including France, Spain, Greece, and Italy) have long been admired for their health and longevity. People living in these regions tend to be healthier and have a lower risk of many chronic conditions.

Studies have revealed that following this eating style of limited red meat, poultry, and dairy products in favor of healthy grains, vegetables, fruits, and fish can help you lose weight as well as numerous diseases.

Overall, however, the diet is high in healthy plant foods, is low in animal products and meat and includes fish and seafood at least twice a week.

You can use nuts as a staple in the Mediterranean diet for their nutritional density as well as a source of unsaturated fat.

The Paleo Diet

The main aim of Paleo dieters is to keep away from processed food, refined sugars, and dairy. Favoring natural foods, nuts are essential to the Paleo diet for their high nutritional density.

Paleo dieters prefer raw food that is entirely unprocessed and would advise you to go so far as to avoid any sort of processes – including heating. A purist paleo dieter would tell you to eat raw nuts instead of roasted, but we explain here why roasted nuts is better for your digestive processes in the long run.

Why nuts in the Banting Diet

Essentially a slightly different variation of the Ketogenic diet, nuts would be perfect as a snack for anyone following the Banting diet.

Banting, Low-Carb or Keto are different names for the same diet that is low-carb, gluten-free, sugar-free, healthy fat diet that puts your body into a state called ‘Ketosis’ which charges your body to use your body’s stored fat for fuel, so that you lose weight fast.

And once you’ve tapped into fat burning mode (ketosis), you stop feeling hungry because your body is comfortably fueling itself on your belly, butt, bingo wings and other bulges.

Because you’re not that hungry, and your metabolism is burning fat while you sleep, read, cooking or do pretty much anything, you don’t need to exercise. In fact, exercise is discouraged because it will make you tired and hungry.

The most common benefits of the banting diet are weight loss, reversal of Type 2 diabetes, disappearance of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), normalised blood pressure and vastly improved sleep.

However, in a strict Banting diet, nuts such as Macadamias or Almonds would be preferred over Cashews. All three nuts are considered low carb but Cashews have the highest carb count of the three, which simply means eating in moderation.

Nuts are a cornerstone of many popular diets for their high nutritional value and macro-nutrient density. They also happen to be the best tasting parts of any given diet too.