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Hawaiian Treat Is Loaded With By Sheldon Margen, M.D., and Dale A. Ogar

Even in the most expensive selection of mixed nuts, you will rarely see macadamia nuts, a rare and costly variety. And if you've ever seen a "raw" macadamia, you know why. Harvesting and bringing them to market is a labor-intensive operation.

Macadamia nuts are creamy and buttery, and nutty and sweet, incredibly rich and quite distinct from other nuts. They make an excellent addition to salads, as a topping on almost anything (including a Hawaiian vegetarian pizza with peppers and pineapple chunks) or by the handful (nobody can eat just one).

Macadamias have a reputation for being unusually high in fat. This is true, but over 80 percent of the fatty acids in macadamia nuts are of the mono-unsaturated type, more than even olive oil. Mono-unsaturated fat (often called "the good fat") has been shown to lower blood cholesterol and may even have some cleansing effect on the arteries. Like all vegetable products, macadamia nuts have no cholesterol and, unless roasted and salted, little sodium.

One word of caution, however: Just because certain forms of fats are shown to be beneficial, you shouldn't dramatically increase the overall amount of fat you consume. Fat is still fat.

However, when choosing what fats to include in your diet, remember that the mono-unsaturated fats, like the ones found in nuts, are likely to have the greatest positive effect on your health. In fact, research has shown that a diet higher in overall fat, which contains a large percentage of mono-unsaturated fat, is even healthier than one containing less total fat, but a larger percentage of saturated fat.

Nuts are an important part of most vegetarian and vegan diets, and in the very healthy diets of the Mediterranean region. So if you are going to include nuts in your diet, give macadamia nuts a try. Just be careful. They're highly addictive and can become an expensive habit.

Sheldon Margen, M.D. and Dale A. Ogar are the authors of The Wellness Lowfat Cookbook (Rebus, 1994)

(c) 2001, Sheldon Margen, M.D., and Dale A. Ogar, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2001