Handful of nuts 'cuts heart disease and cancer' risk

Conclusions This systematic review finds evidence that nut intake may be linked with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and death. The systematic review has several strengths. It identified a large number of studies with a large total sample size. It also included only prospective cohorts assessing nut consumption and then followed up later disease outcomes. It excluded cross sectional studies, which assess diet and disease at the same time, and so can't show the direction of effect. It also excluded cohorts that have retrospectively questioned diet when the person already has the disease, which could be subject to recall bias. However, there are still a number of inherent limitations which mean these studies cannot easily prove that nuts are the magic dietary ingredient that are solely and directly responsible for these outcomes. There were no randomised controlled trials of nut consumption. All studies were observational where people were choosing their own diet. The researchers took care to include studies that only looked at nut consumption as an independent factor and looked at results that had adjusted for any confounders. However, the factors that the studies adjusted for, and how well they were assessed, will have varied across studies. As such it's very difficult to prove that nuts alone are the causative factor and they are not just one component of a generally healthier lifestyle pattern, including balanced diet, regular physical activity, not smoking, ...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Food/diet Cancer Heart/lungs Source Type: news