EndoType: Health Nuts? They Grow on Trees

A tree nut industry group is reaping the fruits of its labor this week, with the publication of two positive studies that it sponsored.

Both of the meta-analyses -- one in , the other in -- found that daily servings of tree nuts led to improvements in metabolic health. Both studies were authored by John Sievenpiper, MD, of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, and colleagues.

The International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation -- yes, that's the full name now, and the group can be found at nuthealth.org as its original treenuts.org website loads as a blank page -- has long sponsored research into the foods it represents.

In November, the council supported a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that found nuts to be associated with a lower risk of mortality. The running list of other scientific articles it has sponsored can be found in the press release section of its website.

The group represents nine tree nut industries: almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, and walnuts. It counts the Almond Board of California, the Hazelnut Marketing Board, the American Pistachio Growers, and the California Walnut Commission among its members.

All of these groups ostensibly have a significant interest in promoting the health benefits of their products, and stand to gain by supporting research that validates their point of view.

And support that point of view, it does. The BMJ Open paper, reviewing 47 trials with 2,211 patients, found that a daily dose of 50 g of tree nuts over 8 weeks was associated with a 0.06 mmol/L lowering of triglycerides and a 0.08 mmol/L lowering of fasting blood glucose compared with control diets.

But there were no benefits in terms of HDL cholesterol, blood pressure, or waist circumference -- a detail the hospital was happy to leave out of its press release on the study.

The PLOS One paper involved 12 trials in 450 patients, and showed that 56 g of nuts per day (that's about two servings) over 8 weeks improved HbA1c by 0.07% and fasting plasma glucose by 0.15 mmol/L compared with a control diet.

Both studies were also supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health, and pose a genuinely important question about diet and metabolic health.

Endo Type is a blog by Kristina Fiore for readers with an interest in endocrinology.

But it's hard to take results too seriously when they take funding from an advocacy group, and when the authors have disclosed multiple conflicts of interest with almost every type of food company imaginable.

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Entities 0 Name: Toronto Count: 1 1 Name: St. Michael 's Hospital Count: 1 2 Name: John Sievenpiper Count: 1 3 Name: International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation Count: 1 4 Name: American Pistachio Growers Count: 1 5 Name: Kristina Fiore Count: 1 6 Name: Hazelnut Marketing Board Count: 1 7 Name: Almond Board of California Count: 1 8 Name: Brazil Count: 1 9 Name: HDL Count: 1 10 Name: California Walnut Commission Count: 1 11 Name: Canadian Institutes of Health Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/UHLoq6 Title: The Health Benefits of Trees Description: John "Johnny Appleseed" Chapman stomped through the Midwestern winter snow with bare feet. His cloak was a lightly modified coffee sack with holes for his head and arms that-all of this according to a posthumous 1871 profile in Harper's-he deemed "as good clothing as any man need wear."