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Nuts: untreated vs. Roasted and salted

Hello everyone, what’s the nutritional effect on nuts bought roasted and salted compared to untreated?

I like eating nuts everyday and while I do like the latter more, I wouldn’t mind eating them untreated.

I just noticed that untreated nuts are a bit harder to come by at an affordable price compared to ones sold as snacks.

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Answer

Nuts produce AGEs (Advance Glycation Endproducts) during roasting due to their high fat and protein content. AGEs cause inflammation in the body, contribute to aging, and are speculated to contribute to many disease processes. Of course dose matters, and animal products like cooked meat produce as much if not more AGEs than roasted nuts. There is also the issue of nutrient/phytonutrient degradation during roasting, mostly because the temperatures used are relatively high.

My two cents is that roasted nuts are still healthy if not overdone on, but raw nuts are considerably healthier.

Answer

I don’t know much about the roasting process and that’s already been explained in this thread so I’ll just speak on the added salt. Most western diets are fairly high in sodium and fairly low in the other electrolytes so generally speaking it would be “healthier” to eat the unsalted nuts since you’re most likely getting more than enough sodium, if not too much, in the rest of your diet (this is generally speaking with western diets, idk about other regions diets or special cases like specific medical conditions). The American Heart Association recommend no more than 2300mg, and in my experience with tracking my micros it is very difficult to do so without eating an entirely whole foods diet.

TL;DR - Go for the unsalted nuts, you probably get more than enough sodium in the rest of your diet.

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