Episode 19 - Nuts and CVD - Nuts for Life | Australian Nuts for Nutrition & Health

25 May 2022

May 2022.

About this episode:

In Europe, and in the US, regulators have approved the use of health claims for walnuts improving endothelial function, and for macadamias reducing the risk of heart disease, respectively.

Yet to date, no such ‘food-health relationship’ claim has been approved for use in Australia by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ).

A recent review looked into the strength of the evidence for nuts in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The body of evidence suggests that nuts have a significant beneficial impact on several indicators (or biomarkers) of CVD.

Dr Lauren Houston takes us through the research and summarises the key findings.

About today’s guest:

Dr Lauren Houston is a Research Fellow in the Cardiovascular Program at The George Institute for Global Health and is a Conjoint Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

She completed her PhD in June 2021 at the University of Wollongong in the field of Health Sciences. Her research interests are in large scale clinical trials in chronic disease prevention and treatment.

Lauren currently works in the research areas of type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, and cardio oncology though she has also been involved in research focusing on overweight and obesity, hypertension, gestational diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and mobile health applications.

Dr Houston has presented her research at several national and international conferences and was awarded best oral presentation at the Asia Pacific Conference on Clinical Nutrition 2017. She has strong international ties across Europe and the United States.

Dr Houston was selected as an emerging early-career researcher to attend the Oceanic Nutrition Leadership Program in 2020.