Handful of Walnuts a Day May Improve Diet Quality

Finally an actual amount of food specified for the benefit to take place. If you'd rather do almonds you'll have to do 50 grams a day. Don't do this without your doctors ok. It's dangerous eating unapproved foods.

New research shows almonds reduce the risk of heart disease

http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2015/12/handful-walnuts-day-may-improve-diet-quality?cmpid=horizontalcontent
Adding 2 oz. of walnuts daily could improve diets, blood vessel cell wall function and LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol in people at risk for diabetes, new research shows.
The findings, published in the online journal BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care, show diets, along with other certain risk factors, improved in participants who added a daily intake of 56 g of walnuts for a six-month period.
Adding walnuts did not have any impact on blood pressure or blood glucose levels. Almonds seem to help.
For the study, 112 participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups – one received dietary counseling to reduce calorie intake and the other did not.  Within the two groups, participants were randomly assigned to either add walnuts to their daily diet or avoid walnuts for six months.
Participants included 81 women and 31 men, between the ages of 25 and 75, and all at high risk of developing diabetes.
According to a press release, diet quality was assessed using the Healthy eating Index 2010 (HEI-2010), and improved diet was associated with a better cardiovascular risk profile and lowered risk of long term conditions.
At the beginning of the study, participants were assessed across a number of health variants, including height, weight, BMI, cholesterol, fasting blood glucose, and blood pressure.  These numbers, along with dietary intake were assessed again after 3, 6, 12 and 15 months.
Eating walnuts on a daily basis was associated with improved diet quality, after factors such as exercise, age, and calorie and fatty acid intakes, where accounted for.
Both those who received caloric-intake dietary counseling and those who did not, saw improvement in endothelial cell function associated with a walnut-rich diet.
“Our data suggest that inclusion of walnuts in the diet, with or without dietary counseling to adjust caloric intake, improved diet quality and may also improve [endothelial function], and reduce total and LDL cholesterol in this sample of adults at risk for diabetes,” the researchers concluded in a prepared statement.
Walnuts, which contain essential fatty acids and vitamin E, have been associated with various health benefits, such as heart health and brain health.
The researchers said further studies in more diverse groups of people are needed.