Almonds

Almonds.

Almond nuts are of two types, sweet and bitter.
Sweet almonds are edible type consumed as nuts and used in cooking, or as a source of almond oil or almond meal.

The almond tree, growing somewhat larger than the peach and living longer, is strikingly beautiful when in flower. The growing fruit resembles the peach until it approaches maturity; as it ripens, the leathery outer covering, or hull, splits open, curls outward, and discharges the nut.

The sweet almond is cultivated extensively in certain equatorial regions. The tree greatly resembles the related peach, with which it occasionally hybridizes. While dormant, it is nearly as hardy as the peach, although ordinarily flowering earlier, from late January to early April north of the Equator. The nut crops are therefore uncertain wherever frosts are likely to occur during the period of flowering. Sweet almonds mature only occasionally in climates like that of southern England.

Leading exporting countries of shelled almonds during the late 1970s were the U.S., Spain, Italy, Iran, Portugal, and Morocco.

Bitter almonds, as inedible as peach kernels, contain about 50 percent of mixed oil that also occurs in the sweet almond, together with an enzyme, emulsin, which in the presence of water yields glucose, prussic hydrocyanic acid, and the essential oil of bitter almonds is called benzaldehyde. When the prussic acid has been removed, the oil of bitter almonds is used in the manufacture of flavouring extracts for foods and liqueurs.

Almonds provide small amounts of protein, iron, calcium, phosphorus, and B vitamins and are high in fat. They may be eaten raw, blanched, or roasted and are commonly used in confectionery baking. In Europe a sweetened paste made from almonds is used in pastries and in marzipan, a traditional candy. The almond is also widely used in meat, poultry, fish, and vegetarian dishes of Asia.



A daily and regular as like a habit of intake of boiled almonds
could significantly reduce level of two biomarkers for oxidative
stress in people with high cholesterol. It is found that use of almonds
successfully reduced plasma melondial-dehyde and urinary
Isoprostanes level in a group of selected fifty males
and females with high percentage of cholesterol.

When analysed, the blood and urine samples from subjects,
who consumed three different dietary treatments consisting of
same amount of calories, each for a period of one month.

Treatment consisted of

(1).a full dozes of almonds weighing four ounce, daily.
(2).a half-dose of almonds plus a half dose of muffins daily, and
(3).a full dose of muffins daily, as a control.

Subjects consumed a low-fat diet and were counselled on
strategies to maintain weight and to follow their usual exercise
routines through out each test phase, to test, to investigate
possible anti-oxidant effects from eating almonds.

It was found that when the subjects ate the full doze of almonds,
their concentration of two bio-markers MDA and urinary
Isoprostanes were significantly lowered.

MDA decreased by 20% compared to the start of the study
in the full-dose almond group.

Isoprostanes decreased by 28% in both the almond groups
when compared to the control period, suggesting a possible
threshold effect for that biomarker.

The study helps to show the anti-oxidant effects of almonds,
Further research on individual contributions of Vitamin E,and
Polyphenolic constituents like flavonoids found in almonds,
is underway.