{"id":2582,"date":"2012-05-09T22:09:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T05:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=2582"},"modified":"2012-05-09T22:10:16","modified_gmt":"2012-05-10T05:10:16","slug":"peanuts-are-heart-healthy-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=2582","title":{"rendered":"Peanuts are &#8220;heart healthy&#8221; &#8212; maybe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I noticed this text on my jar of peanuts:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Scientific evidence suggests but does not prove that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts, such as peanuts, as part of a diet low in saturated fat &#038; cholesterol &#038; not resulting in increased caloric intake may reduce the risk of heart disease.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Got that?  <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=floatRight width=150 src=\"http:\/\/static.freepik.com\/free-photo\/stock-ilustrations-peanut-vector_18-3300.jpg\">The phrasing might make one think that peanuts are also low in saturated fat.  But according to my jar, 1.5 ounces of them provides 3 grams of saturated fat, or 15% of your US RDA.  So as long as that handful of peanuts is only 1\/6 of your daily fat consumption, does that count as &#8220;low&#8221;?  Notice you are also not permitted any increase in calories consumed, so if you add the peanuts, you have to take away 260 calories of something else.  Or maybe not.<\/p>\n<p>The Peanut Institute (yeah) goes further, calling peanuts <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peanut-institute.org\/health-and-nutrition\/disease-prevention\/heart-disease.asp\">&#8220;cardioprotective&#8221;<\/a>.  Potentially biased sources aside, there does seem to be a pile of studies out there connecting peanut &#8220;and tree nut&#8221; consumption to decreased heart risk factors (here&#8217;s just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/18716180\">one<\/a>).  But the waffly nature of the wording struck me as odd.<\/p>\n<p>Although I just noticed it, the FDA approved this &#8220;qualified&#8221; notice for peanuts in 2003.  From the University of Nebraska&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/lancaster.unl.edu\/food\/ftmar04.htm\">Food Reflections<\/a> newsletter:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A &#8220;qualified&#8221; health claim means FDA evaluated the data and determined &#8220;though there is scientific evidence to support this claim, the evidence is not conclusive.&#8221; A qualified health claim is issued by FDA when it is determined that consumers will benefit from more information on a dietary supplement or conventional food label concerning diet and health even though the claim is based on &#8220;somewhat settled science rather than just on the standard of significant scientific agreement, as long as the claims do not mislead the consumers.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Somewhat settled science&#8221;?  Does this mean that there are studies that found different outcomes?  I wasn&#8217;t able to find any in a quick search of google and google scholar.  However, searching for &#8220;FDA&#8221; and &#8220;peanuts&#8221; alerted me to a 2009 salmonella outbreak in peanut butter.   <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also annoyed by the phrasing &#8220;most nuts, such as peanuts,&#8221; given that peanuts are legumes, not nuts.  It *does* seem to be the case that they&#8217;re associated with tree nuts in the relevant studies, but still, it&#8217;s irritating to see this miscategorization deliberately perpetuated.  Would it have been so hard to say &#8220;most nuts, as well as peanuts&#8221;?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I noticed this text on my jar of peanuts: Scientific evidence suggests but does not prove that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts, such as peanuts, as part of a diet low in saturated fat &#038; cholesterol &#038; not resulting in increased caloric intake may reduce the risk of heart disease. Got [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2582"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2597,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2582\/revisions\/2597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}