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A study published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care shows that including walnuts in your diet for 6 months will improve the quality of your diet, says Endocrinology Advisor.

According to the researchers of the paper, handful of walnuts leads to overall diet quality and also an improvement in certain factors that cause diabetes. Since walnuts are a rich source of fatty acids such as folate and Vitamin E, they provide the body necessary nutrients making it healthy. However, they are also high in calories that increases concerns about the weight gain issues if one is not consuming calorie controlled diet, reports University Herald. "Our data suggest that inclusion of walnuts in the diet, with or without dietary counseling to adjust caloric intake, improved diet quality and may also improve [endothelial function], and reduce total and LDL cholesterol in this sample of adults at risk for diabetes," conclude the researchers.

The researchers collected data from 100 people for the purpose of study, Time reported. The participants of the study were assigned randomly to follow a diet with limited calorie intake and the other one without such a guidance. Within these two groups, one was given a daily inclusion of 56g of walnuts and the other one was following a complete avoidance of the nuts for six months. After taking into account many factors such as age, exercising, calorie and fat intake, the analysis indicated that the walnuts improved the quality of diet.

David Katz, MD, MPH, at the Yale University School of Medicine, and colleagues, told MedPage Daily in an email, "Walnuts are uniquely nutritious, so they likely confer benefits that other nuts do not." He added, "In general, nut consumption has been associated with health benefit, including reduction in all-cause mortality, but few nuts have been studied in isolation -- mostly walnuts and almonds, and to a lesser extent, pistachios."