A new study revealed that eating almonds is the best food alternative when craving for chips and other junk foods. The study also said that eating a handful of almonds a day can replace the empty calories from the junk foods and decreases the salt intake of a person and increases the amount of protein.
The study was created by the scientists from the University of Florida, Daily Mail reported. They said that including almonds to your daily diet can help improve a person's overall health.
The study has observed 28 pairs of parents together with their children for three weeks. They were told to put almonds or almond butter to their diet routine. It is also reported that the scientists used the Healthy Eating Index to measure their diet's quality.
Reports claimed that the study concluded that the parents' score results are above average basing on USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans. They said that the parents increased value of their protein food components and decreased their consumption of foods with empty calories. The scientists also found out that the parents were replacing processed snacks with almonds.
According to a doctoral student in food science and human nutrition and the author of the study, Alyssa Burns; they are looking forward to the big impact of adding almonds into the healthy diet of young children. She also said that by doing this, it can also improve child's healthy choices when it comes to food.
"The habits you have when you are younger are carried into adulthood, so if a parent is able to incorporate almonds or different healthy snacks into a child's diet, it's more likely that the child will choose those snacks later on in life." Burns said. "Some of the challenges that we saw were that the kids were getting bored with the almonds, or they didn't like the taste of the almond or almond butter."
