Peanut butter is beloved by people of all ages. You may be surprised to find that peanut butter can improve the health of your heart and control blood sugar levels, among other benefits. If you’ve been curious if peanut butter is healthy, you’ve come to the right place.
Pros
Peanut butter offers a solid amount of magnesium, potassium, zinc, other important vitamins and minerals, and protein.
Peanut butter has a good balance of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), making it beneficial to your heart.
Eating nuts frequently can reduce your risk of dying from heart disease. Additionally, peanuts are an affordable food that can improve your heart health.
Eating peanuts and peanut butter can help you maintain a healthy weight or lose weight and get on your way to reaching a healthy weight. This is likely because the fat, fiber, and protein in peanuts help keep you feeling full. A study from 2018 indicated that eating nuts lowers the likelihood of being overweight or obese. In a study that only involved female participants, it was discovered that women who ate nuts at least twice a week gained slightly less weight than the women who rarely ate nuts during the 8-year study.
No-sugar-added peanut butter can be good for people who have diabetes because this type of peanut butter does not greatly raise or lower glucose levels. In a study, obese women at risk of developing type 2 diabetes who added peanuts or peanut butter to their breakfasts maintained lower blood sugar levels and stayed full longer.
Peanut butter increases your magnesium intake, which is an important factor in ongoing times of high blood sugar. People with low magnesium levels who do not have diabetes are at a higher risk of developing prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.
Bodybuilders take advantage of peanut butter’s high protein amount to help them build and repair muscle tissue. Eating peanut butter can also help prevent benign breast disease (BBD) and lower women’s risk of developing breast cancer.
Cons
Although it provides many vitamins and nutrients your body needs and offers a number of health benefits, peanut butter is also loaded with calories, saturated fats, and sodium. For this reason, it is important to make sure you consume peanut butter in the right amount according to your dietary needs.
Peanut butter can be appropriately incorporated into your diet, and you can feel less guilty about it now that you understand its benefits.