Hazelnuts  for Taste and Health  !!!

Fresh hazelnuts are certainly good for us. They are a good source of energy, high in monounsaturated fatty acid and oleic acid, and very low in saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. They are a good source of micronutrients, vitamin A, E, B12, and amino acids. And best of all they are cholesterol free. 

We usually think of hazelnuts being chocolate covered as a sweet, but they have so many other uses:

In salads.     Breading and batters on fish, chicken, or pork.       Stuffing for fish, chicken, or pork.      Sprinkled onto cooked vegetables.      Baking.    Wok cooking.    With pasta.   With pesto.    In soups.    In burgers.    Simply roasted and salted with herb, spice, or sugared coatings such as orange, lemon, vanilla, etc.

Fresh hazelnuts are fantastic raw with their slightly sweet taste, creamy texture, and crunch. Toasted, they change to the nutty taste and crisp crunch that we have come to expect. 

Hazelnut flour is gluten free and usually used along with white flour, in baking, rather than by itself. Use it anyplace where the nutty flavour of hazelnuts is wanted. In biscuits, muffins and breads chopped hazelnuts go well with the hazelnut flour. To use hazelnut flour in an existing recipe, replace about ¼ of the plain flour with hazelnut flour. If using self rising flour, add a teaspoon of baking powder to each cup of hazelnut flour. 

Hazelnut oil is cold pressed from fresh hazelnuts and is 100% pure oil. There should be no additives and no chemicals should be used to separate the oil.  The following table shows how Hazelnut oil compares with three other oils that are commonly used. The percentages are “approximates only” and can vary within oils due to a large variety of considerations, such as differing plant cultivars, types of soils, etc.                                                                                           

Good News Hazelnut Research

On average hazelnuts contain approximately 61% fat so they contain a lot of energy. It is interesting to note that most nutritionists are encouraging people to eat more nuts. No they are not trying to increase future attendance at the local gym. It is important to look beyond the total fat content.75% of the fatty acids in the oil are made up of oleic acid (a monounsaturated fatty acid, also found in olive oil). This fatty acid is extremely good for you. Nuts also contain a lot of other nutrients that are important in a healthy diet. The very strong encouragement to eat more nuts comes from some very interesting nutrition research carried out at Lome Linda University in California . 

Back in the mid 1970’s a team of epidemiologists at Loma Linda University asked more than 25,000 Seventh Day Adventists in California to estimate how often they ate 65 different foods. Ten years later the nutritionists looked at the data to see if there were any foods that were consistently linked to good health. One food stood out: nuts. Almonds, cashews, pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts, and even peanuts.

Joan Sabaté of Loma Linda showed that people who ate nuts often….five or more times a week….were half as likely to have heart attacks or die of heart disease as people who rarely or never ate them. Eating nuts just one to four timed a week cut the heart risk by a quarter. It didn’t matter if the people were slim or fat, young or old, active or sitting all day. In 1993 the Iowa Womens Health Study showed even better news. Women who ate nuts more than twice a week cut their risk of heart trouble by 60%. A number of different studies have been carried out feeding people regular amounts of nuts and a feature of the results is that the low-density lipoprotien (LDL) fraction is reduced when compared with a nut free diet. It’s the LDL fraction that is involved in the clogging of the arteries and eventual problems with heart disease.

For a long time vegetarians have valued nuts as an alternative source of protein but nuts have more than protein to offer. Up to eight different constituents might contribute to the positive nutritional benefits of nuts. All nuts are known to contain these constituents in high levels. The list is linolenic acid, folic acid, arginine, fibre, vitamin E, potassium, copper, and magnesium. Plant sterols must now be added to that list. 

Each one of these constituents that occur in hazelnuts contributes to the overall nutritional value in different ways and it is probably correct to say that the large epidemiological studies have been too quick to identify the fatty acid profile as the positive factor in nuts. It is much more likely to be a combination of all these positive factors.

Eat some nuts every day….so many nutritional experiments have shown how important they are to our health. However, make sure that you eat fresh, tasty, locally grown nuts….you can’t go wrong.

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