Sorry to burst your bubble, but I view veganhealth.org as an animal rights site giving health advice. Nothing wrong with that but with all due respect, their dietitians are the last ones I would seek health info from, and yes I mean Ginny Messina. She has written that she prefers not to recommend the vegan diets that produce optimal health because she rejects the work of McDougall, Campbell, Fuhrman, Esselstyn and the rest -- but most importantly she feels their diets are too "restrictive" and simply going vegan is restrictive enough. She wants as many people to go vegan to save animals, and she has written expressing her concerns that the diets of these health experts are harder to stick to and could lead to fewer people remaining vegan, and thus fewer animals saved. She's actually written that. Messina appears to have very different objectives than the actual health experts here (not to mention she fails on the "walk your talk" side of healthy diet if you look at her hubby...).

I prefer taking health advice from health and nutrition professionals who have a long proven record of using diet to reverse serious disease and get people off meds -- which no one associated with veganhealth.org has any experience with. Their long suit is saving animals and increasing the number of vegans, which is fine but not the same thing at all.

The "nuts don't cause weight gain" mantra is actually not so simple. There are good studies showing nuts DO cause weight gain, in addition to population studies suggesting nuts are associated with weight loss.

But a few facts to remember: there is a calorie compensation when you eat nuts so you do absorb fewer calories from nuts than they contain, and in many studies people merely gained LESS weight than would have been expected from the added calories from nut, but they still gained. Most importantly those studies showing nuts may not be associated with weight gain deal with very limited amounts, like an ounce of nuts a few times a week, and not unlimited. It's pretty clear from many posts here and elsewhere responding to AJ's article that this is the crux of the problem -- people are reading veganhealth.org or other sites with the notion that nuts are super foods or necessary for adequate absorption (they're not), and then they chow down on nuts or nut butters regularly, and then wonder why they can't lose those last 10 or 15 pounds. They aren't eating 2 oz of nuts a week, as Dr. Greger advises, they are eating 20 oz or something, along with a bunch of avocado and other high fat foods.

So thank you to AJ for sharing your story here. I expect those who follow her lead are also going to shed pounds and run faster and have less joint and other issues that extra weight can cause, not to mention it feels good when you find a way to effortlessly drop pounds you may have wanted to shed.

I have posted on Dr. McDougall's site a detailed piece about the nut question and in response to a nut-pushing piece by Dr. Greger.

You can review it at:

http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31052&p=311172

Thank you.

In general I do not. Once in a blue moon I have a green smoothie as a treat, but in general no. When I do, I make my own.

If nuts and seeds stop heart attacks, why is heart disease still the number one killer of all Americans?

And if someone still has fat on their body and they give up nuts as an experiment for 3 weeks, I seriously doubt they will have a heart attack. Excess weight, on the other hand, carries great risks.