JAMA: Eating nuts and peanuts was associated with a reduced risk of overall
death and death from cardiovascular disease across different ethnic
groups and among individuals with low socioeconomic status, which
suggests that peanuts, because of their affordability, may be a
cost-effective measure to improve cardiovascular health, according to an
article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Nuts are rich in nutrients and peanuts, although classified as
legumes, have nutrients similar to tree nuts. Peanuts are included as
nuts in many epidemiologic studies. Evidence suggests that nuts may be
beneficial with respect to coronary heart disease, according to the
study background.
Xiao-Ou Shu, M.D., Ph.D., of the Vanderbilt University School of
Medicine, Nashville, and coauthors sought to examine the association
between nut/peanut consumption and mortality.
The authors analyzed three large study groups involving 71,764
low-income black and white men and women living in the southeastern
United States and 134,265 Chinese men and women living in Shanghai,
China. Men in both the U.S. and Chinese study participant groups
consumed more peanuts than women. In the U.S. group, about 50 percent of
the nut/peanut consumption was peanuts and in the participant groups
from China only peanut consumption was assessed.
Study results indicate that nut intake was associated with reduced
risk of total mortality and cardiovascular disease (CVD) death in all
three groups. In the U.S. study participant group, there was a reduced
risk of total mortality of 21 percent for individuals who ate the most
peanuts. In the Chinese study participant groups, the risk reduction for
death associated with high nut intake was 17 percent in a combined
analysis. An association between high nut intake and reduced risk of
ischemic heart disease was seen for all the ethnic groups.
“We found consistent evidence that high nut/peanut consumption was
associated with a reduced risk of total mortality and CVD mortality.
This inverse association was observed among both men and women and
across each racial/ethnic group and was independent of metabolic
conditions, smoking, alcohol consumption and BMI. We observed no
significant associations between nut/peanut consumption and risk of
death due to cancer and diabetes mellitus. … We cannot, however, make
etiologic inferences from these observational data, especially with the
lack of a clear dose-response trend in many of the analyses.
Nevertheless, the findings highlight a substantive public health impact
of nut/peanut consumption in lowering CVD mortality given the
affordability of peanuts to individuals from all SES (socioeconomic
status) backgrounds,” the study concludes.
Editor’s Note: Live Longer … For Peanuts
In a related Editor’s Note, Mitchell H. Katz, M.D., director of the
Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and a deputy editor of JAMA Internal Medicine,
writes: “Of course, peanuts are not really nuts (they are legumes since
they grow in bushes, unlike tree nuts), but who cares if they help us
to live longer at an affordable price.”
(JAMA Intern Med. Published online March 2, 2015. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.8347. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)
Editor’s Note: This
work was supported by grants from the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Please see the article for additional information, including other
authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures,
funding and support, etc.