Cashew Nuts
Cashews make the creamiest paste, is an amazing addition to soups and is perfect as a vegan cheese alternative in pasta dishes and sauces. Let’s look at whether it’s good for us!
The creamiest result
When you want a lovely thick, creamy consistency out of your nut butter, nut milk or …anywhere that you use nuts as an alternative, cashew is definitely at the top of my list. I just love cashews as a snack, in my breakfast granola and in my creamy soups. Cashews seem especially creamy and oily as a nut, and make brilliant nut butter too - even as an alternative to actual butter, in my opinion! Today I’ve looked at some of the health benefits of cashews. And I’m going to share them with you!
The first thing I learned really blew my mind! “Raw” cashews that you buy are not actually raw at all. Might this be why they behave the way they do in our kitchen processes? Maybe! Anyway, truly raw cashews straight off the tree (they’re a seed by the way, not actually a nut) contain urushiol, which is toxic and can cause a skin reaction. So the “raw” cashews we buy are actually cooked to remove this toxin!
Like a lot of nuts we’ve looked at, cashews are calorie dense, and contain a lot of manganese, magnesium and zinc. They also contain a ton of copper! We’ve looked at all these components in lots of previous types of food, try the tags at the bottom of this page to find what the benefits of them are and what some other food sources might be.
Cashews are high in protein, with similar amounts to meat, so they are definitely a great plant-based alternative in a meal. The fats in cashews are unsaturated fats, the good kind! So they are a brilliant source of energy (read my fat is not the enemy if you need a reminder). Nut-rich diets are actually linked to weight loss and overall lower body weight.
There have been several studies that look at what cashews do for your heart and they are slightly inconsistent, however it seems likely that cashews help lower cholesterol and blood pressure! Let’s hope that’s true!
The fiber in cashews can be beneficial to people with diabetes type 2, as it helps prevent blood sugar spikes.
It all sounds pretty good to me, and to top it off, roasted cashews (yum!) seem to have more antioxidants, which are amazing to help neutralise free radicals in the body, meaning they help reduce inflammation in the body (linked to …pretty much all of the bad stuff that can happen to us). So roast some cashews, make butter, granola, soups, vegan queso and pasta sauces to your heart’s (literally) content!
Do you like cashew nuts? How do you use them in the kitchen? Message me on Instagram @TheFromScratchBody!
