The amazing health benefits of hazelnuts!

(Adapted from a 2023 Food Network Revolution Summit Docuseries)

If you asked ten people to pick a nut, any nut? What would they say?

You’d probably get responses like “peanuts” (which aren’t actually nuts, but whatever), almonds, pecans, and pistachios.

Hazelnuts are a type of tree nut, just like almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, pecans, pistachios, and walnuts. They’re also called filberts and cobnuts.

Like other tree nuts, hazelnuts are protected by a shell inside a fleshy husk. Unlike walnuts, cashews, and pecans, hazelnuts seem to want to be consumed; they drop free of the husk when mature and are a lot easier to crack than other nuts. Hazelnut fans describe their taste as nutty, sweet, and a bit earthy, with an almost buttery texture.

Unfortunately hazelnuts haven’t gotten the same scientific love and attention as, say, walnuts or almonds. So some of the conclusions we might draw about the health benefits of hazelnuts must be accompanied by a disclaimer: the number, size, and quality of these studies mean that there’s more work to do in discovering the true health potential of the hazelnut.

That said, here’s what we do know.

Hazelnut Nutrition Facts

Like most nuts, hazelnuts are nutrient-dense foods. They’re rich in monounsaturated fatty acids and antioxidants (principally caffeic acid and quercetin, among others). They’re also high in vitamin E, tocopherols, and phytosterols.

The skin of the hazelnut is especially good for us, containing a robust selection of polyphenols, dietary fiber, and natural antioxidants. Sadly, it’s often removed during processing and discarded as “agro-waste.”

Hazelnuts also provide us with l-arginine, a precursor of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is one of the compounds most associated with cardiovascular health, as it protects the endothelial lining of blood vessels and causes your arteries to relax, allowing more blood flow and lessening blood pressure.

And hazelnuts are a good source of several key minerals, including magnesium, copper, phosphorus, and manganese. Even skinless, they’re a good source of fiber, too.

Hazelnuts and Type 2 Diabetes

Hazelnuts are among the nuts whose consumption is associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. Like other nuts studied, hazelnuts aid in glycemic control, helping people avoid blood sugar spikes and dips throughout the day. In some trials, hazelnuts were the clear winners, lowering fasting blood glucose and HbA1c (both markers for diabetes) twice as effectively as walnuts, and more than four times better than almonds.

Are Hazelnuts Anti-Inflammatory?

We’ve known for a while that many commonly eaten nuts can help our bodies reduce inflammation, which is a root cause of many chronic disease processes. Given how rich hazelnuts are in monounsaturated fatty acids and antioxidant phenolic compounds, it seems logical that they would display powerful anti-inflammatory properties. And indeed, that’s what researchers are finding.

One 2012 study that will make lots of people happy found that a combination of cocoa cream, sterols, soluble fiber, and hazelnuts reduced inflammatory biomarkers (and cholesterol) in adults with high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

A 2019 study reported that adding 40 grams of hazelnuts a day (about 260 calories) upregulated up to a dozen genes responsible for antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity. And a nice bonus was, the hazelnut group didn’t gain weight compared to controls. The researchers theorized that it was the anti-inflammatory effect on all those genes that might have enabled the hazelnut-munching participants to consume more calories without the scale heading upward.

Are Hazelnuts Good for Your Heart?

While walnuts, almonds, and pistachios have long been known to protect against cardiovascular disease, there hadn’t been much research specifically on hazelnuts until 2013. In that year, researchers put 21 volunteers with high cholesterol on a four-week hazelnut-heavy diet, with the nuts making up about 20% of their daily calories.

Before and after, the volunteers followed their normal diets, which were the same number of calories but did not include hazelnuts. Their cardiovascular risk factors decreased significantly when tested at the end of the hazelnut month, compared with the hazelnut-free diets they consumed before and after the trial period. Their blood flow increased by over 50% as measured by flow-mediated dilation, and their cholesterol markers improved as well, with total and “bad” LDL going down while the “good” HDL went up. That’s very impressive, but it was a tiny study, with just a few participants.

In 2016, a meta-analysis of nine similar studies of small groups of people consuming unusually large quantities of hazelnuts for one to three months found that the nuts did lower LDL and total cholesterol — with no impact on BMI.

And building on that cocoa-hazelnut study from 2012, researchers in 2018 gave 61 healthy participants breakfasts that included either hazelnuts, cocoa, both together, or neither, for two weeks. Those eating just unpeeled hazelnuts saw their HDL (good) cholesterol rise by an average of 7%, and some measures of blood flow rose by 25–65% with hazelnuts and cocoa together.

Hazelnut Gut Benefits

All the fiber found in hazelnuts and other nuts seems to provide a yummy prebiotic diet for many of our beneficial gut microbes. And to thank us, those microbes work to make us healthy as well.

A 2018 study looked at differences in the intestinal bacteria populations in children with and without high cholesterol, and found that those with high cholesterol had a lot of not-so-friendly bacteria. After eight weeks of the children eating hazelnuts with the skins on, those bacteria were less abundant and replaced by more beneficial strains.

Antioxidant Effects of Hazelnuts

Researchers are always looking for ways to block the production of nasty compounds called advanced glycation end-products, which are known by the appropriate acronym “AGEs” because they can prematurely age us, as well as contribute to oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and worsening of complications of diabetes. A 2021 test-tube study produced data suggesting that polyphenol-rich compounds derived from hazelnut skin can inhibit the formation of AGEs.

Want more healthy eating tips like this? Want to learn more about specific healthy eating tips to support your microbiome and gut health? Let’s talk!

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