By MARILYNN MARCHIONE / AP Chief Medical Writer

DALLAS (AP) -- Help yourself to some nuts this holiday season: Regular nut eaters were less likely to die of cancer or heart disease -- in fact, were less likely to die of any cause -- during a 30-year Harvard study.




The benefits were seen from peanuts as well as from pistachios, almonds, walnuts and other tree nuts. The researchers did not look at how the nuts were prepared -- oiled or salted, raw or roasted.

A bonus: Nut eaters stayed slimmer.

'There's a general perception that if you eat more nuts you're going to get fat. Our results show the opposite,' said Dr. Ying Bao of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.






'Sometimes when you eat nuts you eat less of something else like potato chips,' so the benefit may come from avoiding an unhealthy food, Sacco said.

The Harvard group has long been known for solid science on diets. Its findings build on a major study earlier this year -- a rigorous experiment that found a Mediterranean-style diet supplemented with nuts cuts the chance of heart-related problems, especially strokes, in older people at high risk of them.




Study participants who often ate nuts were healthier -- they weighed less, exercised more and were less likely to smoke, among other things. After taking these and other things into account, researchers still saw a strong benefit from nuts.


'I'm very confident' the observations reflect a true benefit, Bao said. 'We did so many analyses, very sophisticated ones,' to eliminate other possible explanations.



'We're seeing benefits of nut consumption on cardiovascular disease as well as body weight and diabetes,' said Kris-Etherton, who has consulted for nut makers and also served on many scientific panels on dietary guidelines.

'We don't know exactly what it is' about nuts that boosts health or which ones are best, she said. 'I tell people to eat mixed nuts.'

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