The body of evidence about nuts and health continues to grow. These local and international research papers, published during January 2020, corroborate decades of research about the importance of a healthy handful of nuts in a healthy diet.

Walnuts good for the gut and help promote heart health
Researchers found that eating walnuts daily as part of a healthy diet was associated with increases in certain bacteria that can help promote health. Additionally, those changes in gut bacteria were associated with improvements in some risk factors for heart disease.

Promising results for walnuts in delaying cognitive decline – The Walnuts and Healthy Aging (WAHA) study: a randomized controlled trial
Although walnut supplementation had no effect on cognition in healthy aging adults, MRI results suggest that walnuts might delay cognitive decline in subgroups at higher risk. These encouraging but inconclusive results warrant further investigation, particularly targeting disadvantaged populations, in whom greatest benefit could be expected.

Nuts exert protective effect against cardiometabolic disease
This review updates a previous review published in December 2018 by the same authors. The results of this update found that nut consumption has beneficial effects on cardiometabolic disease with reduced CVD mortality, CHD mortality, stroke mortality, CVD incidence, CHD incidence and stroke incidence comparing high with low categories of nut consumption.