If you’re look­ing for a healthy snack that can give you a lit­tle boost of en­er­gy at the same time, most peo­ple will tell you to run to a hand­ful of nuts. For the month of Au­gust, Health Plus Su­per­food of The Week will be fo­cused sole­ly on nuts, let­ting you know the ben­e­fits that this pow­er­ful snack can have for your body.

Ac­cord­ing to Robert H Shmer­ling, of the Har­vard Health Blog: “Pre­vi­ous stud­ies have found that peo­ple with high­er nut con­sump­tion have im­proved car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk fac­tors and low­er rates of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease.” Let’s find out why.

This week, we’re start­ing with Wal­nuts— they are a wrinkly-look­ing globe type, but some say the wal­nut re­sem­bles a brain if you look hard enough. Wal­nuts con­tain mono-un­sat­u­rat­ed and polyun­sat­u­rat­ed fats which are both good fats for the body. They’re al­so rich in omega 3’s, zinc, iron, cal­ci­um, se­le­ni­um, vi­t­a­min E and some of the B vi­t­a­mins.

Here are a few ben­e­fits that you should con­sid­er when in­clud­ing wal­nuts in­to your di­et:

Rich in an­tiox­i­dants

May de­crease in­flam­ma­tion

Pro­motes a healthy gut

Sup­ports weight con­trol

Sup­ports good age­ing

Sup­ports healthy brain func­tion

Im­proves blood fats

They’re eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble and great to add to your di­et