Wal­nut — Crunchy powerhouse

The wal­nut tree is one of the old­est trees in the world. Its fruits, the wal­nuts, are very healthy for our body and also a real brainfood.

Wal­nuts con­tain a lot of fat, but these are unsat­u­rat­ed fat­ty acids and there­fore healthy fats. Thus they have a pos­i­tive effect on our heart. But they also keep our brain fit due to the vit­a­mins they contain.

The ori­gin, prop­er­ties and his­to­ry of walnut

The wal­nut tree orig­i­nat­ed in Asia and is one of the old­est trees on earth. It is assumed that it already exist­ed in the Ice Age. Archae­ol­o­gists assume that the Stone Age peo­ple col­lect­ed wal­nuts for sur­vival in case there was no hunt­ing prey. In the Neolith­ic peri­od, the wal­nut was con­sid­ered a sym­bol of fer­til­i­ty by the Romans and Greeks.

A wal­nut tree can grow up to 30 meters high. The fruits, i.e. the wal­nuts, are sur­round­ed by a green shell, which usu­al­ly bursts open by itself when the nut is ripe. Usu­al­ly the nuts are ripe at the end of Sep­tem­ber and begin­ning of Octo­ber. Once they break free from the shell, they can be picked up from the ground. The taste of the wal­nut is sweet­ish to slight­ly bit­ter. The wal­nut is cul­ti­vat­ed world­wide in tem­per­ate cli­mates. Here in Ger­many, the wal­nut is main­ly found in the south in the wine-grow­ing regions. There­fore, we obtain our wal­nuts main­ly from the USA and France.

The ingre­di­ents of the walnut

The wal­nut has a fat con­tent of 60 % and is there­fore very high in calo­ries. On 100 g wal­nuts come 674 kcal. Although the nut is very fat­ty, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that these are healthy fats. Because it has monoun­sat­u­rat­ed and polyun­sat­u­rat­ed fat­ty acids, includ­ing omega‑3 fat­ty acids. Com­pared to oth­er nuts, wal­nuts con­tain by far the high­est amount of omega‑3 fat­ty acids.

In addi­tion to healthy fats, the nut also con­tains vit­a­mins of the B group and vit­a­min E. Oth­er impor­tant ingre­di­ents are also zinc, mag­ne­sium, iron, potas­si­um and calcium.

The effect of wal­nuts on our body

It has long been known that nuts are healthy. But why is that so? Wal­nuts have many healthy ingre­di­ents that have a pos­i­tive effect on many areas of our body, such as the heart and brain.

Wal­nuts have a very pos­i­tive effect on our heart. On the one hand, this is due to the omega‑3 fat­ty acids they con­tain. These can pre­vent cal­ci­fi­ca­tion of the arter­ies and thus reduce the risk of a heart attack. On the oth­er hand, reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of wal­nuts can pre­vent car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, because wal­nuts low­er the cho­les­terol lev­el. This keeps the blood ves­sels flex­i­ble and our blood can flow bet­ter through the body.

Wal­nuts are good for the brain. Thanks to the con­tained vit­a­min B, the con­sump­tion of nuts pro­motes con­cen­tra­tion, low­ers stress lev­els and pro­vides ener­gy. In addi­tion, our men­tal and motor skills are improved and the brain is pro­tect­ed from a decline in per­for­mance in old age.

Wal­nuts can reduce the risk of can­cer. The empha­sis is on “can”, because there is not yet suf­fi­cient research in this regard. How­ev­er, the fact is that wal­nuts con­tain polyphe­nol. Polyphe­nols help the body regen­er­ate. In addi­tion, the body con­verts polyphe­nols into ellag­ic acid, which in turn has an anti-inflam­ma­to­ry effect.

Wal­nuts sup­port mus­cle build­ing. As already men­tioned, the nuts con­tain healthy fats and car­bo­hy­drates. In addi­tion, they are a veg­etable source of pro­tein, because they pro­vide the body with a lot of pro­tein. Wal­nuts are very healthy, but you should not over­do it and stick to the rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly amount of eight whole walnuts.

Wal­nuts in the kitchen

The healthy nuts can be used very ver­sa­tile in the kitchen. You can enjoy them raw or roast­ed, in sal­ads, pas­ta, bread, cakes, as a snack or top­ping. Wal­nut ice cream is also par­tic­u­lar­ly deli­cious. In addi­tion, they are also avail­able as oil, liqueur, liquor or nut water. Basi­cal­ly, it can be said that wal­nuts round off spe­cial­ties, such as hon­ey or cheese.

Wal­nut storage

Wal­nuts like it cool and dark, such as in the cel­lar. They keep like this for months. It is best to store them in a mesh bag so that they still get air.

If you go to pick up the wal­nuts them­selves, so they should be very well dried before storage.

You can rec­og­nize bad wal­nuts by their smell and appear­ance. These smell ran­cid and have dark to black dis­col­orations. In this case, the bad ones must be sort­ed out from the good ones, as they may con­tain tox­ic molds.

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