Pistachios: Kickstart Your Healthy Snacking Journey By Grabbing A Handful Of This Multi-Nutrient Nut

All snacks are not bad. It is what you choose to eat that determines your health quotient and pistachios are at the top of the list of healthy snacks.

We Indians are notorious for our chai nashta and snacks. Unfortunately, a lot of Indian snacks are unhealthy and totally unkind to our waistlines. Chiwda, laccha, namkeens of all sorts, pakodas, samosas the list of snacks is endless. However, not all these snacks are good for our health and general well-being. The worst part is that the urge to munch on a snack strikes just about any time and is quite difficult to tamp down on. Mindless snacking, specially the 11.00 AM and 5 PM snack attacks can undo even the strongest of wills and defeat all well-meaning diets.

However, snacking is not the devil it is being made out to be, rather it has a lot going on for it: It makes you less cranky, provides essential nutrients and keeps your weight under control (by controlling your appetite, increasing your metabolic rate, and stimulating your body to burn more fat). So please have that snack - and don't feel guilty about it. Now this is not a blanket green light for the myriad of deep-fried foods: namkeens of all sorts, pakodas, batatas, samosas and many more.

Choosing to eat healthy

However, not all snacks are bad. It is what you choose to eat that determines your health quotient.

Here are a couple of examples of healthy snacking.

• You can either opt for steamed bhutta (corn), which incidentally is one of the healthiest foods you can nibble on, or fry the bhuttas wrapped in a batter and make pakoras (very unhealthy obviously).
• You have the option to open a packet of trans fat laden chips or you can opt for good fat, protein, and fibre rich nuts like pistachios (very healthy).

So, the choice to snack healthy is completely in your control. And is very doable. Also it helps to make the snacks do some extra work for you. For example, when you shell the pistachios to eat, they may slow you down during snack time.

Benefits of grabbing a handful of pistachios

Here's why you need to snack on pistachios:

• They are loaded with multiple nutrients
• Eating a handful of pistachios can bridge hunger between meals if you are working long hours
• It will help you avoid over-eating at mealtimes.
• Pistachios are the perfect snack. They are portable,
• They help refuel you and deliver energy and satisfaction

So always keep a bag handy in the office drawer, and even your car for those long drives back home.

Nutritional value

A 28-gram serving of pistachios provides 6-grams of protein and and 3 grams of fibre.

• Pistachios are a brilliant cravings buster, as the duo of fibre and protein in them keep you full and satisfied for longer.
• Plus, the act of opening each pistachio shell to get out the nut can slow down the eating process, which also leads to automatic portion control.
• Despite being rich in fat, they have more of the healthy, unsaturated fats than saturated fat. This helps to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol and boosts the HDL (good cholesterol).

A slight shift is all that is needed

Thus, what we need to do is to change our mindset about snacks. We should not think of snacks as extras. Instead, we should consciously work healthy bites into our diet and make them a part of our food plan for the day. It is important to remember to never snack out of boredom. Snacking should be done only to assuage hunger. We also need to choose our snacks right Pistachios, with their multiple benefits, tick all the right rules of healthy snacking.

The bonus? They are delicious as well!

(This article is authored by Ms. Kavita Devgan, Nutritionist & Author, California Pistachios)