NUTS TO YA!

A very tasty and handy source of nutrition while dieting is nuts and seeds. These foods for dieting provide a healthy supply of protein and can help replace your meats for daily nutritional requirement for short periods. Of course you wouldn't replace meats totally, as a good steak or chicken breast is necessary occasionally for your mental well being also.

But nuts are filled with all the nutrition necessary to grow a tree or schurb or any other plant, and are very healthy when used as a diet supplement. They have high fat content, but it is of the unsaturated variety which is good from the cholesterol standpoint. Nuts actually reduce LDL cholesterol (bad for you) and help you maintain your HDL (good) cholesterol.

Due to their high fat content, some dietitians dropped nuts as a health food, but in recent times they have been put back on the good foods list. And since there is so little difference in the dry roasted and the ones roasted in oil you can eat either, depending on individual taste. They are all good for you. They were considered by the Romans to be a food of the gods. Nuts are known to help in the fight against cancer, and can reduce the risk of heart disease. They have high amounts of fiber, protein, minerals, vitamins B and E, and several good dietary fats.

Nuts are a great snack between meals, and much better for you nutritionally than say a candy bar. Several clinical studies view nuts as being healthy for your heart. Lowering your blood cholesterol is a definite plus from a heart standpoint.

Seeds are also good food for diet and overall general health. They are great in stir fry vegetables as well as salads. A handful of seeds (sunflower, sesame, pumpkin and many other seeds) can provide your daily requirement of certain nutrients. That places it in the excellent food category for nutrition. Some seeds carry upward of 75% of daily requirement of copper, with sesame seeds having the highest concentration.

So if you are dieting and watching your food intake, a great source of nutrition as well as strength would be nuts and seeds. They are handy and require no refrigeration and can provide a reasonable snack at anytime during the day, be a good food for dieting, as well as a good supplement for your regular meals.