Those teeny tiny handfuls of nuts with the good antioxidant characteristics have not been doing the trick. We enjoyed the product and even thought we were lowering cholesterol fears, but no, not enough.

The news, from California’s Loma Linda University’s Department of Nutrition with funding from the Tree Nut Council, is excellent: Grab a second handful, and you’ll be doing yourself a bigger favor. You’ll love the taste and at the same time you’ll see an improvement in heart-healthy benefits. None of the individuals in the study were taking cholesterol-lowering medicines but if they had high cholesterol, their numbers dropped.

Let’s look at the much maligned Macadamia or similarly, the Pistachio. Both are popular in the Atkins diet universe, but often denigrated as nuts you should avoid. Maybe not; these tree nuts do the same cholesterol and triglyceride lowering as their faithful companions.

What about the lowly peanut that is banished from most pre-school lunch boxes and many school cafeteria but certainly not at the ballpark. As long as you are not allergic, you can benefit from ingesting peanuts for their positive heart healthy ways.

Before you finish a container of nuts, remember that a little more than 2 ounces were given to subjects in this study and that amount lowered cholesterol levels by over 5%. Another takeaway is that the results did not apply to individuals who were considered obese. The nuts did not do the trick! Nor did a smaller helping of nuts lower cholesterol as much as grabbing that second handful!

Of course, we can overdo the nut-eating scenario, but we can help our hearts by not cutting them out of our diets! You’ll be surprised how many nuts are in two ounces! Get out the measuring cup and do your heart a favor!

Definite news to digest.