Multiple studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of eating nuts. Nonetheless, the editors felt it was worth publishing another such study for 2 reasons. First, this study1 combined 3 cohorts to produce a large and diverse sample, including a predominately low socioeconomic cohort of Americans and 2 Chinese cohorts. The authors found that higher nut intake was associated with lower mortality in all 3 cohorts. The consistency of the results between the cohorts and with prior studies that have been performed in higher-income populations increases our confidence that the beneficial effects of nuts are not due to other characteristics of nut eaters. Second, in the 2 Asian cohorts, nuts were limited to peanuts because there was very little tree nut consumption in these groups. This is important because peanuts are cheap and ubiquitous (and can be ground into delicious peanut butter!). 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.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.
1.Luu
HN, Blot
WJ, Xiang
Y-B,
et al. Prospective evaluation of the association of nut/peanut consumption with total and cause-specific mortality [published online March 2, 2015].
JAMA Intern Med. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.8347.
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