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3400 Industrial Parkway
Nevada, MO 64772}
(417) 667-3501
marketing@mopecans.com
Missouri
Northern Pecan Growers LLC
Pecans—a new heart medicine
“I
was in a wheelchair and using a walker. Now I’m going strong.”
Herman Ledbetter, O’Donnell, Texas
Mother Nature
puts medicine in the most unlikely places.
Imagine—rather than looking only to a capsule to
lower your cholesterol, look to pecans. Two recent studies say
you could increase the benefit of your medication by adding a
handful of pecans to your daily diet. Roughly 11,000 dieticians
across the United States learned the same thing last October at
the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition
Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia. Some are already
prescribing pecans for patients with coronary heart disease.
The Scientific
Advisory of the American Heart Association acknowledges its Step
I Heart-Healthy diet has two drawbacks. First, it lowers the
good cholesterol (HDL) at the same time it lowers the bad
cholesterol (LDL). Second,
the
Step I diet increases triglyceride levels that increase the risk
of coronary disease. For this reason, researchers at Loma
Linda University studied the effect of replacing one-fifth of
the food in the Step I diet with pecans that naturally contain
monounsaturated oil. Participants on the pecan-rich diet were
given more fat than those on the Step I diet, yet had twice the
reduction in cholesterol, and their triglycerides decreased.
They did not gain weight. These findings were published in the
September 2001 issue of the
Journal of Nutrition.
“Pecans have what we call the
‘good’ fats,” says co-author of the study, Sujatha Rajaram,
“which help to prevent the decline in HDL cholesterol. These
fats lower the bad cholesterol and do not affect the good
cholesterol.”
An earlier
study was conducted by Texas A&M University. It compared the
AHA Step I Diet to a normal American diet in which 40% of the
calories from fat were in the form of pecans. Critical
micronutrient levels increased with the pecan-enriched diet.
Manganese and copper are essential components of antioxidant
enzyme systems. These are deficient in the AHA diet.
If
that were not enough to motivate cracking open pecans along with
the pill bottle, Herman Ledbetter’s testimonial might. The
82-year-old retired pharmaceutical salesman from O’Donnell,
Texas, took the research to heart more than a year ago. After
reading about the recent studies, he began eating a handful of
pecans one hour before his main meal every day. His
cardiologist told him pecans were not on his diet, but if he
added them, the doctor wanted to monitor
the
results. Within eight months, Herman Ledbetter’s weight went
from 317 pounds to 235, and his cholesterol dropped from more
than 300 to 174. He has
stopped
taking his heart medication and hasn’t needed it since. “When
my doctor checked me, the stints he put in [his coronary
vessels] were loose,” Ledbetter said. “The best part is the
weight loss. I was in a wheelchair and using a walker. Now I’m
going strong.”
Some local supermarket produce managers
are displaying Missouri Northern Pecans well past the normal
holiday season in recognition of National Pecan Month in April.
“The petite, northern variety has the highest monounsaturated
oil content of all pecans,” says grower, Joe Wilson, of Spring
Hill, Kansas. “We’re delighted produce managers are willing to
carry pecans for health conscious shoppers.”
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