Going Nuts?

A place to get your questions answered from McDougall staff dietitian, Jeff Novick, MS, RDN.

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Re: What about walnuts?

Postby Nettie » Sun Mar 23, 2008 5:26 am

JeffN wrote: While I am not recommending this to anyone, as it is not necessary, the only true way to "measure" food, in this regard is by weight. Tell 10 people to show you a "handful" or a "cup" or an "ounce", even if they have measuring cups, and will get 10 different amounts. However, if you ask people to give you 4 oz and they all have reliable scales, you are more likely to get to examples of 4 oz, though even this way can have some errors.


I invested in a good kitchen scale that weighs fractions of an ounce. I weigh out 3/4 of an ounce of walnuts a couple of nights a week. (It's not very many nuts, I'll tell you.) On alternate days (3 x per week) I use ground flax seed in my oatmeal.

Even that small amount of walnuts makes me feel compulsive when I eat them; I'm not sure why they affect me that way. But sticking to 3/4 of an ounce a couple of days a week is how I discipline myself.

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Postby Quiet Heather » Sun Mar 23, 2008 11:07 am

In regards to the omega 6 to 3 ratio, I played around with the first diet option you listed on the CronOmeter, and using 1oz of flax provides more omega 3 than omega 6; all the other nuts or seeds that I tried out provided more omega 6 than 3...although I didn't try walnuts, guess I have to do that now. I assume you gave an average of the different nuts in your example. I was just wondering how we could get more omega 3's than 6's (or at least almost equal amounts) in our diets since that is what "they" say our ancestors ate. This leads me to my next questions - what DID our ancestors eat? and who are "they" that say we ate this specific ratio of 6 to 3? and where can I learn more?

Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss this with us! It is so interesting. :)
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Postby JeffN » Sun Mar 23, 2008 4:31 pm

Quiet Heather wrote:In regards to the omega 6 to 3 ratio, I played around with the first diet option you listed on the CronOmeter, and using 1oz of flax provides more omega 3 than omega 6; all the other nuts or seeds that I tried out provided more omega 6 than 3...although I didn't try walnuts, guess I have to do that now. I assume you gave an average of the different nuts in your example. I was just wondering how we could get more omega 3's than 6's (or at least almost equal amounts) in our diets since that is what "they" say our ancestors ate.


A diet based on the natural foods recommended here in the recommended amounts provides about a 2:1 ratio on average. Most natural foods, except for a few exceptions like flax seeds and chia seeds have more omega 6 than 3. So, while those few foods have a reverse ration, unless someones diet was made up of those foods predominately, which would not be a good ideas, they would not have a ratio of more 3s to 6s

Quiet Heather wrote: This leads me to my next questions - what DID our ancestors eat? and who are "they" that say we ate this specific ratio of 6 to 3? and where can I learn more?


Whatever they could get their hands on! :)

There are lots of theories but no one knows for sure and it would depend on geography, climate, etc. There is and was no one answer.

However, there were only so many foods available as they did not have the food industry and all the 1000s of food "products" we know have.

Quiet Heather wrote:Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss this with us! It is so interesting. :)


Thank you

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