If nuts are so healthy, nutritious and good for you, why do they have such high nutritional scores?

Question

For example, the Nutrition labelling: Calories and Reference Intake (RI) on the front of my bag score as follows:

– Energy: 630kj/151kcal
– Fat: 9.5g (14%)
– Saturates: 0.9g (5%)
– Sugars: 10.7g (12%)
– Salt: <0.01g (<1%)

In: 0

Answer 1

The Fat = Bad is a bit of a myth promoted by various industries who benefit from people buying higher sugar foods.

Dietary fat, especially from plants, tends to have a lot of nutrients and is something your body very much needs. It is possible for a human to literally starve to death while gorging themselves if they’re not consuming enough fat with the rest of their calories. Fat =/= Bad.

Another aspect is our bodies aren’t particularly good at converting dietary fat to body fat. We’re great at converting carbohydrates to fat, but not so much fat to fat. A lot of the fat we consume is for immediate energy use, just a too high fat diet can lead to weight gain as it frees up your body to convert all the carbohydrates you consume into fat. This is one of the perverse things about the low fat diet crazes of the 80’s and 90’s – they force people to cut down on foods that aren’t easily converted to body fat and then replace those foods with ones rich in energy sources our bodies are really good at putting into fat stores. It’s also why “Atkins” and similar diets work – you eat only foods your body is bad at putting into storage.

Note: “Fat” here isn’t intended to also mean deep fried potato chips and other similar foods. Ideally the fats you consume should be part of the food you’re consuming.