This months Zone newsletter, Sue wrote an article about nuts. A good article; however, i would dispute one thing in the article.
She suggests dry roasted peanuts (in the context of deep-fried shells).
Nuts, like meats, when heated at high temperature (Meats above 300 deg F) also produce harmful products (acrylamide in nuts and AGEs in meats).
So, unless one roasts their own nuts at low temperatures, at home -- you are destroying some of the nutrients and ingesting more harmful ones.
So, I would stay away from any store bought roasted nuts ....
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"Nuts undergo a natural chemical transformation when heated, making them a potentially dangerous addition to a diet plan."
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"Acrylamide
Roasting nuts also has its risks. Acrylamides -- chemicals that form in foods during the roasting process -- have carcinogenic effects in animals and could also have harmful human effects. In a Swiss study reported in the 2005 "Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry," researchers noted that nuts highest in free asparagine, a type of amino acid, had the highest levels of acrylamides after roasting. In this study, roasted hazelnuts contained low levels of acrylamides, and European almonds contained less than almonds grown in the United States."
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"Scientists have tested for the potentially harmful levels of acrylamide, a potentially threatening byproduct of the amino acid asparagine, in roasted nuts such as almonds and hazelnuts. The research results showed that those nuts containing high levels of asparagine released the cancerous chemical compound more than those lacking the amino acid.
Nuts rich in asparagine, such as almonds, have the potential to harm your health and fitness when roasted. Sticking to raw nuts remains the safest method to avoid such problems."
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"By now, you probably realize that nuts are good for you. Yes, they're high in calories, but they're also loaded with monounsaturated fats which help to improve your lipid profile and decrease your risk of heart disease. You should be getting more nuts; but instead of turning to roasted nuts, as most people do, you may want to consider the health benefits of raw organic nuts.
What advantage do raw organic nuts have over roasted ones? One area of considerable concern with regard to roasted nuts is the issue of acrylamides. Acrylamides are chemicals formed when certain foods containing the amino acid asparagine are heated to a high temperature. The problem with acrylamides is they've been shown to cause cancer in animals and are strongly believed to be carcinogenic in humans. The majority of nuts contain enough asparagine that when roasted to high temperatures they form significant amounts of these cancer causing chemicals.
The way to avoid the formation of dangerous acrylamides is to eat raw organic nuts rather than the roasted variety. This is particularly true of almonds which generally form higher levels of acrylamides than do other roasted nuts. The hazelnut is a nut with lower levels of asparagines so it's least likely to form high levels of acrylamides.
There's also some question as to whether heating nuts to high temperatures alters the healthy fats that make them so beneficial for the heart. Heat has the ability to cause changes in chemical bonds which may affect structures such as fats. High heat can also increase the formation of free radicals which have negative effects on the body by damaging DNA, the genetic material. These free radicals can also cause a reaction called lipid peroxidation which can injure the walls of blood vessels and increase the risk of heart disease."
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