NUTS to YOU

Below is a process we go through regarding our nut supply, and general fat intake, but let me first give you a little sales pitch on the value of nuts in the diet. In our other features on www.blueeyedcurse.com we go into the importance of two issues concerning fats. They are the good fats and the essential fatty acids that you derive from good fats and the bad fats. The myth that fat makes you fat is just that, a myth, within limitations as nuts do have a lot of calories so you can't pig out on nuts. There are about 200 calories in an ounce of Walnut halves and that is about 8 nice sized halves, so that is as far as the myth goes. Sugar on the other hand is really the fat producer as it triggers off the insulin affair and that is what makes you fat. A mix of nuts that involve smaller nuts than walnut half would measure about 12 to 15 nuts to the ounce.

Too much animal fat can be a problem unless you are a woodsman that chops down big trees with an axe and then even animal fat is not a problem, as woodsman ate an abundance of animal fat. Fat is the bodies preferred source of energy, versus sugar. So if you aren't a big old grizzly woodsman, you have to be prudent on your intake of animal fat. In fact with the high caloric fat content of nuts you have to be prudent with them as well, but this depends on your level of physical activity. Good fat is the bodies preferred source of energy. Sugar is an energy source as well, but when you exceed the amount of sugar that you need, especially with refined sugar that blasts into your system lacking the fiber to slow the process, it turns to fat and tissue acid wastes. So if obesity doesn't get you cardiovascular wise, the tissue acid waste will gum something up to do you in.

Unfortunately many derive their 6 and 9 essential fatty acids from baked goods, cakes, pies, breads, bagels, rolls and all the "good stuff" (good tasting that is), deadly other wise. These items use inexpensive highly cooked cooking oils that do have the 6's and 9s's in them, but they convert to trans-fatty acids in the process, that borders on being "Serial killers". When McDonald's, Burger King and throw in New York City abandons trans-fats you know something is rotten in Denmark.

Researchers at Washington University developed genetically engineered mice that could not produce new fatty acids in the liver. To survive, the mice had to receive fat from their diet to help produce hormones and metabolize cholesterol.

What happened was that their bodies moved peripheral fat stores to their livers. Under normal circumstances, (If one exercises on a regular basis) their livers would have burned the fat for energy. Again fat is the bodies preferred source of energy. However they couldn’t do so without the addition of new good fats into the diet, so that the old fat just accumulated in their livers. Most people cannot stomach the picture on the left. Quite frankly I can't either. When new good fat was added, their livers were able to remove and burn the old fat. Thus, while a healthy liver should be able to burn fat, eating new good fat will help the process. I would comment that new good fat would consist of a moderate amount of the 3 fats, saturated fat in meat at a minimum, but don't cut it our entirely as there are essential nutrients in meat, polyunsaturated fats as in nuts and seed, and monounsaturated as in olive oil and nuts as well.

In the essential fatty acid department, nuts and seed have primarily "good" 6's and 9's. Walnuts have a generous amount of Omega 3's in them and one of the reasons we are weighted heavily in Walnuts as you will see below. Out of 1200 or so foods tested for their anti-oxidant content Walnuts ranked number 2 and guess what food was ranked number 1???? Black berries. We buy our blackberries frozen and put in 1 or 2 in our yogurts twice a day with all the other stuff we eat. Most frozen berries we believe are picked and handled at peak quality and easily dispensed in frozen loose form. We just believe that frozen products that include raspberries, blueberries and even pineapple chunks are best. Trying to maintain the quality of fresh berries out of the supermarket is an effort in futility as you usually wind up dealing with an inferior product half way through a "fresh" package and chucking out some at the end. Strawberries seem to be an exception as they are readily available throughout the year. With Blueberries there are abundant times as in Carolina and Jersey seasons when you can place them on a cookie sheet, freeze them and they place them into containers.

If you are interested with what are diet consists of, copy the link below into your buffer and when you get done with this feature go into http://www.blueeyedcurse.com/newmeal.htm

We also are weighted in Almonds as they are one of the only nuts that are alkaline forming foods and we favor a diet that has about 80% alkaline forming foods. http://www.blueeyedcurse.com/alkalize.htm

The other 3 nuts that we favor in our mix are Brazil, especially for their selenium properties, Pistachio and Pecans, just to provide a little diversity in the mix of minerals and nutrients. Nuts are very high in magnesium and magnesium in tandem with calcium is critical, although it is written that calcium should be at a 2 to 1 ratio to magnesium. We supplement with each as well. With our diet consisting of Calcium and Magnesium foods we limit our supplements to about 1000 mgs. of calcium and 500 mgs. of magnesium.

So if you partake in a generous amount of nuts, example 8 or 9 on your morning cereal or on a large dark green salad as I do twice a day, you still should counter the good 6s and 9s with Omega 3 fatty acid foods. They say the optimum balance is 1 to 1, 6s and 9's to 3's. My favorites are Pumpkin seed and the finest Omega 3 food of them all is Flax seed. In order to extract the benefits out of flax seed they have to be ground up fresh right before you use them. There is a supplier of the Proctor Sylex coffee grinder. Kitchen Connections 888-548-2651. It is only a little guy on the right. It grinds up a couple of tablespoons of rather hard shell flax seeds very well. Should be under 20 bucks including shipping and handling.

Another high Omega 3 food is dark color raw vegetables and using nuts on a salad is the cats whiskers. Of course when you talk Omega 3's fish and fish oil are supreme. I eat about 4 ounces ( a full can) of Portugal caught smoked sardines with my lunch salad 4 times a week. One of the meal I take a full can and chop up the sardines (Usually the tomato based sardines) and mix them with a can of Progresso soup (The Manhattan clam chowder).

We have Alaskan salmon and crab meat once in a while, although I am shying away from scavenger shell fish. I still have to have my couple of pieces of Boars Head Micro wave bacon every Saturday morning though.

Sardines from the deep pristine waters off of Portugal are not subjected to Mercury contamination that is unfortunately in most fish, especially the big ones like Shark and Tuna. There is a brand that I like smoked lightly and in olive oil or tomato based, Bela Olhao. There are many centenarians that swear their longevity came from eating a lot of sardines. Shop the Internet for Portugal sardines. They have their seasons so when you can get them load up with a couple of dozen cans or more.

We buy the nuts in 2 1/2 lb. bags as this is the way sell them so that we can get the ratio that we prefer and mix our own. We buy 10 lbs at a time in the following amounts, 2/1/2 lbs. of Walnuts, (the halves) , 2 1/2 lbs. of Almonds raw, 2 1/2 lbs. of Brazil the large ones and 2 1/2 lbs. of Pecans.

How do we use nuts? Every meal and snack. (about 7 to 8 mixed at main meals and 4 or 5 at snacks) The fat in nuts and seed are the main transporters of nutrients to the cells by the way. Taking in nutrition is one thing, making it available to the cells is another. Good fat also removes fat and fatty plaque from your body parts. It is almost like fighting fire with fire. Whole nuts are just like spinach picking up excess iron. The Fat in nuts in its natural confinement will attach to the bad fat and dispose of it and that is what you want. It works in diet plans, it works in removing it from your arteries and everything else and I might add the brain as in Alzheimer's disease.

Have you ever wondered how a seed can live in the ground for 50 years or more and germinate after being brought up to the top of the ground. Its magic guys, pure magic.

We have a nut supplier in Hollywood Florida. Hialeah Nut Products. On Hayes Street, one block west of the railroad. A few blocks North of Hollywood Blvd. and a block or so north of Johnson St. They have a good turn over and their prices aren't out of line. 954-923-3379 They will ship them to you. Refrigerate them after you mix them and bag them up.

Note: I place all of our nuts in plastic grocery bags after mixing them in a large paper grocery bag and they do not exceed a couple of pounds, in the refrigerator. As tight as it is in the refrigerator you don't want to wrestle a 5 or a 10 lb. bag out of the refridge just to fill the daily plastic container we use once a week or

so. They will hold a nice portion to fill up your everyday plastic container. These containers stack nicely on top of one another too and nuts and seed have to be refrigerated.

Using the plastic grocery bags with about 2 lbs of mixed nuts, you will have a fairly large excess tail after you use a twisty tie on the bag. My wife showed me this one, just take a scissor and cut off the excess. Snip!

The plastic containers on the left of our favorite nuts and seed take very little room in the refrigerator.

For those who receive a black and white printout of this, the below link will bring you into the feature on the website in living color and the very graphic image of a liver that you do not want.

This information is intended to heighten awareness of potential health care alternatives and should not be considered as medical advice. See your qualified health-care professional for medical attention, advice, diagnosis, and treatments.