Peanuts are full of protein, vitamins, minerals, and heart-healthy fats. Thus earning it a title of diet-friendly food. Peanuts can be turned into many forms and one of them is salted peanuts. Now, high amount of sodium may contribute to diseases in your body such as stomach cancer and heart disease. Therefore, it needs to be in your best interest to limit the amount of sodium that you consume.
However, limiting sodium intake does not necessarily mean you have to avoid anything that have something to do with salt. Some salted foods, such as the salted peanuts, might not contain as much sodium as you would have thought.
Health Benefits of Salted Peanuts
In fact, beside of its low-to-moderate sodium content, salted peanuts also have a lot of nutritional value and offers your body a lot of essential nutrients that are definitely good for the health, a life-long health. However, it needs to be noted that salted peanuts may affect the blood pressure.
Therefore, to any of you who are at risk for a hypertension, it is best to consume this type of peanuts only occasionally. Read here to know more about the effects of high sodium level. Now let’s just jump right in into what are exactly the health benefits of salted peanuts?
1. Sodium Levels
Although we have stated before that you need to be careful with your sodium intake, you don’t really have to worry when it comes to salted peanuts. Why? Because an ounce of salted mixed peanuts contains just about 98 milligrams of sodium, which according to Colorado State University Extension, is still considered pretty low. This content of sodium in salted peanuts is still lower compared to salted cashews and almonds which accordingly contain 179 and 184 milligrams of sodium per serving.
However, all of these peanuts would still be decent for your daily sodium intake since the Institute of Medicine recommends your daily sodium intake to be 1,500 milligrams and do not exceed 2,300 milligrams. So as long as your daily intake is still between those numbers, then there’s nothing to be worried about. Here’s what you need to know about the health benefits of sodium.
2. Heart-Healthy Fats
Salted peanuts are also good for your heart or in other words, offer some cardiovascular benefits, as they have abundance of unsaturated fatty acids in it. The polyunsaturated fatty acids in the peanuts will lower your level of LDL cholesterol, which is a harmful cholesterol that contributes to heart diseases.
Not only that, peanuts also contain monounsaturated fats in it which are also beneficial to boost the amount of healthy HDL cholesterol in the bloodstream aside from also decrease the LDL cholesterol level. One ounce of mixed salted peanuts contains 8.9 grams of the monounsaturated acids as well as 3.1 grams of polyunsaturated fat.
Not only it contains friendly fats in it, the salted peanuts also contains 1.8 grams of saturated fat per serving, a definitely low number which makes it a good addition for your heart-healthy and friendly diet!
The American Heart Association even classified oil roasted salted peanuts as heart-healthy certified and can be included into an overall healthy eating pattern. Due to this certification, a Heart Check mark may now appear on oil roasted salted peanuts packages.Â
3. Source of Fiber
The fiber content inside of salted peanuts makes it able to offer our body some health benefits. Fiber helps move stool throughout the system in your body and keep you regular, thus it plays a pretty important role for the body. Fiber also promotes the health of colon.
Do note too that foods which have high fiber in it can help you to maintain or even lose some weight since it keeps you full between meals. A high-fiber diets also allows you to decrease your cholesterol level, thus protect your body from heart disease.
One ounce of salted mixed nuts will give your body up to 2.6 grams of dietary fiber, which make up about 10 percent of daily fiber needs for women and 7 percent of daily fiber needs for men. Read more about the health benefits of fiber here to help you understand how big of a deal fibers are.
4. Full of Micronutrients
Salted peanuts will also be able to boost your mineral and vitamin intake. Peanuts contain an abundance of vitamin E, an antioxidant that can prevent blood clotting, aids in cell communication, as well as relaxes your blood vessels to increase the blood flow. One ounce of salted mixed peanuts can offer you 3.1 milligrams of vitamin E which makes 21 percent of your daily vitamin E needs. Here are some more important information of the health benefits of vitamin E.
Besides of vitamin E, salted mixed peanuts also contain copper in it, which is a mineral that is very important to brain function, energy production, as well as connective tissue strength. An ounce of salted mixed peanuts will increase your copper intake by 363 micrograms and provide your body with 40 percent of the daily copper needs.
If you’re bored with salted peanuts, then you can consider coconut water for an alternative as one of the health benefits of coconut water is to supply your body with copper as well.
Peanuts in general also have many other benefits such as:
- A great source of cholesterol-free protein with 8 grams each 1 ounce serving.
- Contains a good amount of Niacin and vitamin E.
- A source of magnesium and potassium which can help you normalize or maintain the blood pressure.
- An excellent source of folic acid.
Now that you have learned the health benefits of salted peanuts, here’s a recipe that you can follow to enjoy further the healthy salted peanuts at home!Â
The Salted Peanut Recipe
To get the best health benefits of salted peanuts, you may want to try this recipe:
Salted Peanuts Protein Balls
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups of salted peanuts
- 1 cup of raisins. You can also use 12 pitted Medjool dates for alternative.
- 1 cup of chickpeas.
- ½ a cup of rolled oats.
Directions
- Add peanuts to a food processor.
- Grind them until chopped.
- Remove ¾ of a cup of the chopped peanuts for later to be use as the topping.
- Process the remaining peanuts until it turns into butter forms.
- Add chickpeas and blend them until smooth.
- Add raisins and oats, process until smooth too and mixed thoroughly, forming like a sort of sticky dough.
- Shape the dough into balls. This one recipe can form 34 salted peanuts balls in total.
- Roll the balls on chopped nuts then place them on a cookie sheet, lined with wax paper or in a glass container to prevent them from sticking from one to another.
- You can enjoy it by now or store them in the fridge first for a firmer consistency in shape.
That’s all the important things you need to know about salted peanuts. We hope this article about health benefits of salted peanuts have been helpful to broaden your knowledge, save your diet program, or basically to enhance your health!