Recent studies revealed that adding a serving of nuts to your diet will help reduce your risk of heart disease.

When I read this I thought, “Oooh! I’m going to stand at the nut bowl during the Christmas Party and eat fists full of salted or honey roasted peanuts until I leave the party thin and smoking hot! Oh goody, that will be easy.”

Since I’m always trying to be informed I read the news article synopsis of the study. (Reading actual studies is really hard. It makes me want to nap.) Anyhoo the synopsis doesn’t exactly say eating nuts will make you smoking hot. And it also doesn’t recommend eating “fistfulls.” What it actually says is eating 7 or 8 non-salted or non-honey roasted hazelnuts, almonds, or walnuts can reduce symptoms of metabolic syndrome.

So the actual study is not as sexy as I first hoped. Here’s what I’m taking away. Eating 7 or 8 plain nuts is better than sticking my head in the potato chip bag and chomping until I see daylight on the other end. I’m going to substitute nuts for chips.

If you’d like the holidays to be even more nutty here are the calorie counts on the nuts used in the study.

3 whole walnuts – 180 calories
1/4 cup hazelnuts – 200 calories
3 tablespoons almonds- 180 calories