Nutrageous!

According to the Mayo Clinic, eating nuts as part of your regular diet can actually be heart-healthy! The type of nut one eats is not important; almost every type of nut is packed with nutrition making it easy to follow a heart-healthy diet. Nuts, which contain unsaturated fatty acids and other nutrients, are a great snack food, too. They're inexpensive, easy to store and easy to pack when you're on the go.

Adding nuts to your diet can also work to lower your low-density lipoprotein, otherwise known as your LDL or “bad” cholesterol, which can be one of the main causes of heart disease. And if you are at risk for developing blood clots, eating nuts can also help reduce that risk as well since their nutrients appear to improve the health of the lining of our arteries.

In addition to providing protein in our diet, nuts also provide us with the following nutrients: unsaturated fats, Omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, vitamin E, plant sterols and L-arginine.

You may also be surprised to know that eating nuts can also make your skin look supple, smooth and younger looking. In fact, nuts and seeds, particularly almonds, are a natural anti-inflammatory, so they also can help treat skin disorders such as acne, psoriasis and eczema

But the benefits don’t stop there. It is a fact that eating nuts such as almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, pistachios and walnuts, just to name a few, actually is beneficial to your hair and scalp. Packed into a small snack, nuts provide unsaturated fatty acids and other nutrients that will help you have a healthy scalp and in turn healthy hair.

So next time you want a snack, go nuts!

Basil

The round, often pointed leaves of the basil plant resembles peppermint, to which it is related. Its highly fragrant leaves are used as a seasoning herb for a variety of foods but has become ever popular as the main ingredient in pesto, the mixture of basil, pine nuts and parmesan cheese.

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