Researchers suggest almonds as a snack to improve diet quality without weight gain

Key takeaways:

• For people who enjoy snacking, almonds could improve diet quality without weight gain.
• The findings are important since fear of weight gain is a common reason for not eating nuts.

Almonds could be incorporated into the diets of habitual snackers to improve diet quality without concerns about weight gain, according to the results of a year-long randomized controlled trial published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

As a nutrient-rich snack, almonds offer a healthier alternative to many foods, Rachel C. Brown, MSc, PhD, researcher, lecturer and deputy head of the department of human nutrition at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and colleagues wrote. Additionally, previous research has indicated that regular almond consumption offers health benefits without weight gain and can even offer specific benefits for weekend warriors.

However, the researchers wrote that most interventions have included dietary advice or have been short. So, Brown told Healio that they opted for a different approach.

“Our study is longer than many previous studies and tried to take a pragmatic approach where we did not provide additional nutrition advice,” Brown said. “This is what would happen most commonly in real-life situations where most free-living people will not receive detailed advice about substitution.”

Hypothesizing that almonds would displace some less healthy snacks in current diets, the researchers compared consumption of almonds vs. biscuits — a mix of sweet cookies and savory crackers and a popular discretionary snack food — on body weight and other health outcomes in a population of regular snackers of discretionary foods.

Brown and colleagues randomly assigned 136 people who were not obese but were habitual discretionary snack consumers to receive almonds or biscuits daily for 1 year. These isocaloric snacks, they wrote, provided either 10% of participants’ total energy requirements or 1030 kJ — which was equivalent to 42.5 g almonds — whichever was greater.

The researchers assessed appetite, anthropometry, blood biomarkers, diet, physical activity and sleep at baseline, 3, 6 and 12 months. At 12 months, they evaluated body composition and resting metabolic rate.

Although there were no statistically significant differences in body composition changes or other non-dietary outcomes (geometric means 67.1 kg and 69.5 kg for almonds and 66.3 kg and 66.3 kg for biscuits), Brown and colleagues found that absolute nutrient intake did appear to improve.

“This adds to the literature that suggests that regularly eating nuts is not associated with adverse weight gain. People can add nuts to their regular diets without fear of weight gain and can improve diet quality,” Brown said. “This is important because fear of weight gain is one of the most common reasons for not consuming nuts.”

From baseline, the absolute intake of copper; calcium; fiber; magnesium; phosphorous; protein; total, polyunsaturated and monosaturated fat; the percentage of total energy from total monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat; and zinc all statistically significantly increased. Additionally, the percentage of total energy from sugar and carbohydrates statistically significantly decreased from baseline in the almond group compared with the biscuit group.

“The simple advice to replace existing snacks with nuts by themselves could be used in public health messages to promote nut consumption without risk of adverse weight gain,” Brown said. “However, based on our results, if weight loss is the goal, more targeted advice is likely to be required.”