Pistachios: Weight and Mindful Eating

Table of Contents

1. The Calorie Question Behind the Research
2. Fewer Calories Absorbed Than the Label Counts
3. Why: Fat Held Inside Cell Walls
4. Empty Shells Left in View
5. In-Shell Versus Shelled
6. Daily Snack Trials and Appetite
7. Pistachios Inside Weight-Loss Programmes
8. Waist, Body Fat and Body Composition
9. What the Pooled Trials Show
10. “No Weight Gain” Is Not “Weight Loss”
11. What “Mindful Eating” Means in This Research
12. What Is Not Known
13. Who the Research Raises Concerns For
14. Connections
15. Key Research Papers
16. Featured Videos

The Calorie Question Behind the Research

Nuts are mostly fat, and fat carries about nine calories per gram, more than twice the figure for protein or carbohydrate. On paper, adding a daily handful of any nut to an otherwise unchanged diet adds well over 1,000 calories a week. The reasonable expectation is slow weight gain. Researchers writing about pistachios describe that expectation as one of the main barriers to nut eating: Mateos and colleagues’ 2022 review lists “the extended belief that they are fattening products” among the reasons population nut intake falls short of dietary guidelines, alongside their cost.

Several features make pistachios a natural test case. Among nuts they are on the lower end for fat and calories per serving (as both the Bulló 2015 and Terzo 2019 reviews note); they carry a meaningful amount of protein and fiber (covered on the sibling Protein and Fiber page); and they are usually sold and eaten in the shell, which slows eating and leaves visible evidence of how much has been eaten. Dreher’s 2012 review in Nutrition Reviews summarised the hypotheses that the later trials tested: that pistachios might help with body weight “because of their satiety and satiation effects and their reduced net metabolizable energy content.” Each of those ideas is taken in turn below.

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Fewer Calories Absorbed Than the Label Counts

The calorie number on a food label is not measured in people. It is calculated with the Atwater factors, long-standing conversion numbers that assume roughly 4 calories per gram of protein and carbohydrate and 9 per gram of fat, and that assume the body absorbs about the same share of each from every food. Metabolizable energy is the term for what is actually left for the body to use once what leaves in stool and urine is subtracted.

Scientists at the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center) measured this directly for pistachios. The study, by Baer, Gebauer and Novotny, was published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2012 and was the first human feeding study of pistachio energy:

• Design. A crossover controlled-feeding study: 16 healthy adult volunteers ate every meal from the research kitchen. Each person went through three diet periods of about three weeks, with 0, 42 or 84 grams of pistachios a day (roughly zero, one-and-a-half and three ounces).
• What was measured. The diets, the urine and the stool were all analysed for nitrogen, fat, fiber and total combustible energy. The energy value of the pistachios was calculated from the difference in energy excreted between the diet periods.
• Result. The measured energy density was 22.6 kilojoules per gram, against the 23.7 kilojoules per gram calculated with the Atwater factors — about 5 percent less. The USDA’s own write-up reported that pistachio calories had “likely been overestimated by about 5 percent, because the fat from the nut wasn’t completely absorbed by the intestinal tract.”
• In everyday terms. Converting those figures (1 calorie = 4.184 kilojoules) gives about 5.7 calories per gram on the Atwater basis and about 5.4 measured — for a 28-gram ounce, a difference of roughly 8 calories. That is this page’s arithmetic from the published figures, not a number from the study.
• A side finding. The pistachio periods lowered LDL cholesterol by 6 percent; total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol and triglycerides did not change significantly.

Two points keep this in proportion. First, 5 percent is a real but small correction — much smaller than the gap the same USDA group reported for almonds, where the label figure of 168 calories per ounce compared with 129 calories measured (see the parallel Almonds: Weight, Satiety and Calories page). Second, the volunteers were 16 healthy adults eating whole nuts under controlled conditions; the figure may differ for pistachio butter, ground pistachios or people who chew differently, which the study did not test.

The USDA account is in the Agricultural Research Service’s magazine: “Scientists Improve Calorie Estimation Method” (USDA ARS, AgResearch Magazine, September 2013). The original paper can be found through the PubMed topic search for pistachio metabolizable energy at the foot of this page.

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Why: Fat Held Inside Cell Walls

A nut kernel is built from plant cells, and each cell keeps its oil droplets inside a wall made largely of fiber. Digestive enzymes can only reach fat that has been released from those cells. Chewing ruptures some cells but leaves many fragments with their walls intact, and human enzymes cannot break down plant cell wall material. The USDA researchers’ explanation for the shortfall was exactly this: “the nut’s cell walls are hard to break down, whether by chewing or by the action of the microbial enzymes in the gastrointestinal tract,” so part of the fat passes through and is lost in the stool. Baer’s paper framed it the same way: earlier studies had suggested that lipid from nuts is more poorly absorbed than lipid from other foods, which would make the true metabolizable energy lower than the Atwater calculation predicts.

This mechanism has a few consequences worth stating plainly:

• It applies to the fat in intact plant tissue. How finely a nut is ground or chewed changes how much fat is released, so a smooth nut butter is not expected to show the same shortfall as whole nuts — but the pistachio study did not measure nut butter.
• The fat and fiber that escape digestion in the small intestine reach the colon, where gut bacteria act on them. That link is covered on the Pistachios: Gut Microbiome page.
• The effect lowers the calorie count; it does not make the calories disappear. About 95 percent of the calculated energy was still absorbed.

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Empty Shells Left in View

The idea that the pile of empty shells works as a visual reminder of how much has been eaten comes from two studies at a Midwestern US university, published in the journal Appetite in 2011. The first, by Kennedy-Hagan, Painter and colleagues, tested whether leaving shells in sight reduced how much people ate:

• Who. A convenience sample of 118 university faculty and staff, told they were evaluating brands of pistachios.
• Set-up. On two separate days each person had in-shell pistachios on their desk for an 8-hour working day: a 16-ounce bowl starting with 4 ounces of pistachios, topped up by 2 ounces every 2 hours, and a second bowl for the empty shells.
• The two conditions. On one day the shells stayed in the shell bowl until the end of the day. On the other day the shell bowl was emptied every 2 hours.
• Result. With the shells left in view, people ate an average of 216 calories of pistachios; with the shells cleared away, 264 calories — a difference of 48 calories (statistically significant). Fullness and satisfaction ratings did not differ between the two days.

That last detail is the interesting one: people ate less with the shells visible yet did not report feeling less full or less satisfied. The authors interpreted the empty shells as a cue that let people track their intake.

What the study does not show is just as important. It covered two single days, in one workplace, with no record of what participants ate later in the day or whether they made up the difference at dinner. It measured pistachios eaten, not total daily calories, and it did not measure body weight. It is a short-term behaviour study, not a weight trial.

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In-Shell Versus Shelled

A companion study in the same issue of Appetite, by Honselman, Painter and colleagues, compared the form of the nut itself rather than the shell pile:

• Who. 140 university students, again told they were evaluating pistachio brands.
• Set-up. Students entering a class were given a 16-ounce cup and served themselves a portion of pistachios — either in the shell or already shelled — and ate at their leisure during the class. What was left was weighed at the end.
• Result. Students offered in-shell pistachios ate an average of 125 calories; those offered shelled pistachios ate 211 calories — 86 calories, or 41 percent, fewer with the shells on. Fullness and satisfaction ratings were again not significantly different.
• Proposed reasons. The authors suggested two: the extra time it takes to crack each nut, and the larger volume an in-shell portion appears to have in the cup.

The same limits apply. This was one class session, a self-selected portion, a student convenience sample, and intake was measured only during that session. Neither of the Illinois studies was a randomised trial in the clinical sense or measured anything beyond the snack itself. No long-term trial in the evidence reviewed here has compared in-shell with shelled pistachios for body weight. (The main Pistachios page discusses the same studies in its section on shelling.)

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Daily Snack Trials and Appetite

The question the shell studies cannot answer is what happens over weeks. Two French randomised trials added a daily pistachio snack to the ordinary diets of healthy women and measured weight, body composition and appetite.

Fantino and colleagues, 2020 — 12 weeks, mid-morning snack

Sixty healthy pre-menopausal women who did not normally eat nuts were randomly assigned either to 44 grams (250 calories) of pistachios mid-morning every day or to carry on with their usual diet, for 12 weeks. Body weight and body composition — measured by DXA, a low-dose X-ray scan that separates fat, lean tissue and bone — did not change in either group. In laboratory and free-living test sessions before and after the intervention, the women’s later food intake adjusted to the pistachio portion, mostly through eating less carbohydrate and starch, and they reported less hunger and more fullness after the snack. Their intakes of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, thiamin, vitamin B6, copper, manganese and zinc were higher. The authors concluded that the extra calories “induced satiety and sufficient adjustment of intake to prevent body weight changes.”

Carughi and colleagues, 2019 — 4 weeks, afternoon snack versus biscuits

A pilot trial in two parallel groups of 30 healthy French women, living normally, compared 56 grams of pistachios with 56 grams of savoury biscuits matched for both calories and protein, eaten as an afternoon snack for four weeks. Satiety did not differ: evening energy intake and hunger, fullness and desire-to-eat ratings were similar in both groups. Neither snack changed body weight or body composition. Thiamin, vitamin B6, copper and potassium intakes were higher in the pistachio group. This is a null result for the appetite question — when calories and protein were held equal, pistachios were no more filling than biscuits in this study. The paper declares that three authors were consultants to a pistachio growers’ trade association and that the research centre received funding from it for the study.

Satiety hormones after a single meal

Kendall and colleagues (2014) gave 20 adults with metabolic syndrome five different test meals in a crossover design and measured the response over the following hours. Compared with white bread alone, pistachio meals lowered the blood-sugar rise after eating and raised levels of GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1), a gut hormone that signals fullness and stimulates insulin release. This was a single-meal laboratory study; it shows a hormonal response, not an effect on body weight. The blood-sugar side is covered on Pistachios: Blood Sugar and Diabetes.

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Pistachios Inside Weight-Loss Programmes

Two randomised trials in adults with excess weight put pistachios inside a structured weight-loss effort and asked whether they helped, hurt or made no difference.

Pistachios versus pretzels: Li and colleagues, 2010

• Who and how long. Adults with obesity, 12 weeks, at a university human-nutrition centre in Los Angeles.
• Design. Both groups followed calorie-matched weight-reduction diets set at 500 calories a day below their resting metabolic rate. The only difference was the afternoon snack: 53 grams (240 calories) of salted pistachios (31 people) or 56 grams (220 calories) of salted pretzels (28 people).
• Weight. Both groups lost weight. Body mass index fell from 30.1 to 28.8 in the pistachio group and from 30.9 to 30.3 in the pretzel group, a significant difference between groups.
• Triglycerides. Lower in the pistachio group at 6 weeks (88 versus 145 mg/dL) and at 12 weeks (88 versus 132 mg/dL).
• No difference in total, HDL or LDL cholesterol, insulin or glucose.

This is the trial most often quoted as showing pistachios helping weight loss, and within its design it did: with calories matched, the pistachio group’s BMI fell further. It is also a single 12-week trial of about 60 people, compared against a refined-carbohydrate snack rather than another whole food, and it used salted nuts.

A behavioural weight-loss programme: Rock and colleagues, 2020

• Who and how long. 100 non-diabetic adults with overweight or obesity, in a four-month behavioural weight-loss programme at the University of California, San Diego.
• Design. Everyone received the same programme; half were also prescribed 1.5 ounces (42 grams) of pistachios a day.
• Weight. Percent weight loss was similar: 5.1 percent in the control group and 4.9 percent in the pistachio group. BMI and waist circumference fell in both groups.
• Other findings. Only the pistachio group showed a significant fall in systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Blood levels of alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and lutein rose in the pistachio group. Pistachio eaters reported more fiber and fewer sweets.

Here pistachios neither added to nor took away from weight loss: people lost the same amount while eating an extra 1.5 ounces of nuts a day. The authors’ conclusion was “a comparable degree of weight loss” alongside favourable changes in the diet.

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Waist, Body Fat and Body Composition

Body weight alone does not separate fat from muscle, or belly fat from fat elsewhere. A few trials measured more than the scale.

• Gulati and colleagues, 2014 (24 weeks, India). Sixty Asian Indian adults with metabolic syndrome followed a standard diet-and-exercise plan after a three-week run-in; one group was also given unsalted pistachios providing 20 percent of daily energy. Researchers measured waist circumference and used MRI to estimate fat inside the abdomen and under the skin of the abdomen. Compared with the control group, the pistachio group showed significant improvement in waist circumference, along with fasting glucose, total and LDL cholesterol, C-reactive protein, TNF-alpha, free fatty acids, a marker of oxidative stress and adiponectin. The abstract does not report a significant between-group difference in the MRI fat measures.
• Fantino and colleagues, 2020. DXA body composition was unchanged after 12 weeks of 44 grams a day, in both groups.
• Carughi and colleagues, 2019. No change in body composition with 56 grams a day for four weeks.
• Nijssen and colleagues, 2024 (mixed nuts, not pistachios alone). Twenty-eight older adults with overweight or obesity ate 60 grams a day of mixed nuts — 15 grams each of walnuts, pistachios, cashews and hazelnuts — or no nuts, for 16 weeks each in a crossover design. Body weight and body composition did not change. Fat stored in the liver fell by 0.7 percentage points, and LDL cholesterol and systolic blood pressure were lower after the nut period.

Taken together, the body-composition data show no fat gain with daily pistachios over 4 to 24 weeks, and one trial in people with metabolic syndrome found a smaller waist. None of these studies was designed or large enough to show that pistachios reduce body fat in general.

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What the Pooled Trials Show

A meta-analysis combines the results of several trials to get a more precise estimate than any one of them can give. Three meta-analyses of pistachio trials reported on body-size measures, and an umbrella review summarised the wider nut evidence.

Pistachio trials

• Asbaghi and colleagues, 2021 (British Journal of Nutrition). Thirteen randomised trials, 563 participants. Compared with control diets, pistachios produced no significant change in body weight (mean difference +0.09 kg; 95 percent confidence interval −0.38 to +0.69), body mass index (+0.07 kg/m²; −0.16 to +0.31) or waist circumference (+0.77 cm; −0.09 to +1.64). The one significant result was a fall in systolic blood pressure of 2.12 mmHg.
• Ghanavati and colleagues, 2020 (Complementary Therapies in Medicine). Eleven randomised trials, 506 participants. The authors reported no adverse effect of pistachios on BMI, alongside reductions in fasting blood sugar, HbA1c, insulin, systolic blood pressure and cholesterol ratios.
• Baghery and colleagues, 2022 (Nutrition Reviews). Seventeen randomised trials, 940 adults, looking at the components of metabolic syndrome. No considerable change in waist circumference or BMI; significant reductions in systolic blood pressure (−2.89 mmHg), triglycerides (−16.8 mg/dL) and fasting blood glucose (−3.6 mg/dL), and a rise in HDL cholesterol (+1.4 mg/dL).

The pooled message is consistent across all three: across trials that added typically one to three ounces of pistachios a day, body weight, BMI and waist size stayed essentially where they were. The confidence intervals cross zero in both directions — the data fit neither meaningful gain nor meaningful loss.

Nuts in general

Kristoffersen and colleagues’ 2025 umbrella review in Nutrients — a review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses — compared food groups for their association with overweight and obesity. The nut data were the largest of any food group, drawing on 520,331 participants and 91,256 cases. High nut intake was associated with a reduced risk of overweight and obesity, as were whole grains, legumes and fruit; red meat and sugar-sweetened drinks were associated with increased risk. These are observational studies: they show that people who eat more nuts are less often overweight, not that nuts are the cause, since nut eaters tend to differ from non-eaters in many other habits.

Results on lipids, blood pressure and blood sugar from these same meta-analyses are covered on Cholesterol and Lipids, Blood Pressure and Blood Vessels and Blood Sugar and Diabetes.

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“No Weight Gain” Is Not “Weight Loss”

Headlines about pistachios and weight often blur two separate findings. Sorting the studies into the two groups makes the evidence clearer:

Trials where pistachios were added and weight did not rise — the large majority:

• Fantino 2020: 250 extra calories a day for 12 weeks, no change in weight or body fat.
• Carughi 2019: no change in weight versus biscuits over four weeks.
• Rock 2020: the same weight loss with or without pistachios in a weight-loss programme.
• The Asbaghi, Ghanavati and Baghery meta-analyses: no significant change in weight, BMI or waist.

Trials where a body-size measure fell more with pistachios — fewer and smaller:

• Li 2010: a larger fall in BMI with pistachios than with pretzels, in 59 people on a calorie-reduced diet.
• Gulati 2014: a larger reduction in waist circumference, in 60 people with metabolic syndrome on a diet-and-exercise plan.

The fair summary of the evidence on this page is that in these trials a daily portion of pistachios did not produce the weight gain their calorie content would predict, and that people appeared to compensate by eating somewhat less of other foods. The evidence that pistachios themselves cause weight loss rests on two small trials and is not supported by the pooled analyses. The likely contributors to the “no gain” finding named by the researchers — fewer absorbed calories, fullness, and compensation at later meals — were each measured in separate studies; no single trial has measured how much each one contributes.

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What “Mindful Eating” Means in This Research

“Mindful eating” is a broad term in nutrition and psychology for paying attention to the act of eating — its pace, its sensations and the body’s fullness signals — rather than eating automatically. Pistachios became attached to the idea because of the two features described above: the shelling slows the rate of eating, and the empty shells give a visible running count. The phrase is the popular label; the studies themselves measured something narrower, namely how much was eaten in a single sitting under different conditions.

Placed side by side, the findings look like this:

• Visible shells were linked to 48 fewer calories of pistachios over an 8-hour workday (Kennedy-Hagan 2011).
• The in-shell form was linked to 86 fewer calories, or 41 percent less, during one class session (Honselman 2011).
• In neither study did people report feeling less full or less satisfied.
• No study reviewed here tested whether these single-session differences add up to any change in body weight over time.

A related laboratory study from France, by Romer and colleagues (2006), used pistachios among six test foods to study sensory-specific satiety — the drop in appetite for a food as more of that same food is eaten. It found that seasoning the food just eaten, or offering a new flavour, revived appetite and led to more eating (an additional 80 percent of the first intake when the eaten food was re-seasoned). It is not a pistachio study as such, but it illustrates the general point that the sensory variety of a snack, not only its calories, influences how much is eaten.

The site’s weight-loss section covers the wider research on these ideas: The Science of Satiety, Energy Density and Calorie Counting.

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What Is Not Known

• Long-term effects. The longest pistachio trial on this page lasted 24 weeks. Whether the “no weight gain” finding holds over years has not been tested in a pistachio-specific trial; the long-term data come from observational studies of nuts in general.
• Whether shells matter over time. The shell studies were one-day or one-session experiments in university settings, by one research group. No trial has followed in-shell versus shelled eaters for weeks and measured weight.
• How much each mechanism contributes. Unabsorbed fat, fullness hormones, protein and fiber, slower eating and compensation at later meals have each been measured separately, never apportioned within one study.
• Different forms. The metabolizable-energy figure was measured for whole nuts. Pistachio butter, pistachio flour, pistachio spreads and sweetened or coated products have not been measured this way.
• Who was studied. Trials were mostly small (20 to 100 people per trial), mostly in adults who were healthy or had overweight or metabolic syndrome, and two enrolled only women. Results in children, older adults or people with diabetes on medication are less well studied.
• Funding. Several pistachio trials and reviews were funded by, or had authors consulting for, pistachio grower organisations; the Carughi trial and the Mandalari review disclose such ties. Independent replication of the shell and satiety findings would strengthen them.

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Who the Research Raises Concerns For

• People with tree nut allergy. Pistachio can trigger moderate to severe IgE-mediated allergic reactions, five pistachio allergens have been officially listed, and pistachio allergy is closely linked to cashew allergy because the two plants are botanical relatives (Costa 2019). See Cashews and the main Pistachios page.
• People watching sodium. Many pistachios are sold salted, and the Li 2010 trial used salted pistachios. The Gulati 2014 trial, by contrast, specified unsalted pistachios. Sodium and blood pressure are covered on the Sodium and High Blood Pressure page.
• Calories still count. Even with the 5 percent correction, a 28-gram ounce supplies about 150 calories. In the trials the portions were fixed (42 to 56 grams a day, or a set share of energy); none tested unlimited eating.

Questions about weight management or a specific health condition are for a clinician or registered dietitian.

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Connections

• Nuts — the nuts landing page
• Pistachios — the main topic page
• Pistachios — Benefits Deep Dive — the hub for this series
• Pistachios: Nutrient Profile — the full composition table
• Protein and Fiber
• Blood Sugar and Diabetes
• Gut Microbiome
• Cholesterol and Lipids
• Blood Pressure and Blood Vessels
• Eye Health: Lutein and Zeaxanthin
• Almonds: Weight, Satiety and Calories — the parallel almond page
• Peanuts: Protein and Satiety
• Cashews — the botanical relative with a linked allergy
• Obesity
• Metabolic Syndrome — the group in the Gulati and Kendall trials
• Weight Loss — the site’s weight-loss section
• The Science of Satiety
• Energy Density
• Weight Loss: Realistic Expectations
• Dietary Fiber
• Lipid Panel — the triglyceride test in the Li trial

Key Research Papers

1. Li Z, Song R, Nguyen C, et al. Pistachio nuts reduce triglycerides and body weight by comparison to refined carbohydrate snack in obese subjects on a 12-week weight loss program. Journal of the American College of Nutrition. 2010;29(3):198-203. PubMed PMID: 20833992
2. Rock CL, Zunshine E, Nguyen HT, et al. Effects of Pistachio Consumption in a Behavioral Weight Loss Intervention on Weight Change, Cardiometabolic Factors, and Dietary Intake. Nutrients. 2020;12(7). PubMed PMID: 32698457
3. Fantino M, Bichard C, Mistretta F, et al. Daily consumption of pistachios over 12 weeks improves dietary profile without increasing body weight in healthy women: A randomized controlled intervention. Appetite. 2020;144:104483. PubMed PMID: 31604062
4. Carughi A, Bellisle F, Dougkas A, et al. A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study to Assess Effects of a Daily Pistachio (Pistacia Vera) Afternoon Snack on Next-Meal Energy Intake, Satiety, and Anthropometry in French Women. Nutrients. 2019;11(4). PubMed PMID: 30986958
5. Gulati S, Misra A, Pandey RM, et al. Effects of pistachio nuts on body composition, metabolic, inflammatory and oxidative stress parameters in Asian Indians with metabolic syndrome: a 24-wk, randomized control trial. Nutrition. 2014;30(2):192-7. PubMed PMID: 24377454
6. Kendall CW, West SG, Augustin LS, et al. Acute effects of pistachio consumption on glucose and insulin, satiety hormones and endothelial function in the metabolic syndrome. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2014;68(3):370-5. PubMed PMID: 24424074
7. Nijssen KM, Mensink RP, Plat J, et al. Mixed nut consumption improves brain insulin sensitivity: a randomized, single-blinded, controlled, crossover trial in older adults with overweight or obesity. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2024;119(2):314-323. PubMed PMID: 38128733
8. Asbaghi O, Hadi A, Campbell MS, et al. Effects of pistachios on anthropometric indices, inflammatory markers, endothelial function and blood pressure in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. The British Journal of Nutrition. 2021;126(5):718-729. PubMed PMID: 33198823
9. Ghanavati M, Rahmani J, Clark CCT, et al. Pistachios and cardiometabolic risk factors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled clinical trials. Complementary Therapies in Medicine. 2020;52:102513. PubMed PMID: 32951758
10. Baghery F, Mohammadifard N, Khanamani Falahati-Pour S. The effect of pistachio supplementation on metabolic syndrome and its components in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Nutrition Reviews. 2022;80(10):2051-2063. PubMed PMID: 35689651
11. Kristoffersen E, Hjort SL, Thomassen LM, et al. Umbrella Review of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses on the Consumption of Different Food Groups and the Risk of Overweight and Obesity. Nutrients. 2025;17(4). PubMed PMID: 40004990
12. Romer M, Lehrner J, Van Wymelbeke V, et al. Does modification of olfacto-gustatory stimulation diminish sensory-specific satiety in humans? Physiology & Behavior. 2006;87(3):469-77. PubMed PMID: 16458336
13. Dreher ML. Pistachio nuts: composition and potential health benefits. Nutrition Reviews. 2012;70(4):234-40. PubMed PMID: 22458696
14. Bulló M, Juanola-Falgarona M, Hernández-Alonso P, et al. Nutrition attributes and health effects of pistachio nuts. The British Journal of Nutrition. 2015;113 Suppl 2:S79-93. PubMed PMID: 26148925
15. Terzo S, Baldassano S, Caldara GF, et al. Health benefits of pistachios consumption. Natural Product Research. 2019;33(5):715-726. PubMed PMID: 29241364
16. Mateos R, Salvador MD, Fregapane G, et al. Why Should Pistachio Be a Regular Food in Our Diet? Nutrients. 2022;14(15). PubMed PMID: 35956383
17. Mandalari G, Barreca D, Gervasi T, et al. Pistachio Nuts (Pistacia vera L.): Production, Nutrients, Bioactives and Novel Health Effects. Plants (Basel). 2021;11(1). PubMed PMID: 35009022
18. Costa J, Silva I, Vicente AA, et al. Pistachio nut allergy: An updated overview. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition. 2019;59(4):546-562. PubMed PMID: 28925724
19. Baer DJ, Gebauer SK, Novotny JA. Measured energy value of pistachios in the human diet. Br J Nutr. 2012;107(1):120-5. PubMed PMID: 21733319
20. Kennedy-Hagan K, Painter JE, Honselman C, et al. The effect of pistachio shells as a visual cue in reducing caloric consumption. Appetite. 2011;57(2):418-20. PubMed PMID: 21704666
21. Honselman CS, Painter JE, Kennedy-Hagan KJ, et al. In-shell pistachio nuts reduce caloric intake compared to shelled nuts. Appetite. 2011;57(2):414-7. PubMed PMID: 21645565

Non-PubMed source: USDA Agricultural Research Service, AgResearch Magazine, “Scientists Improve Calorie Estimation Method,” September 2013 — the USDA account of the pistachio and almond metabolizable-energy studies.

PubMed Topic Searches

1. Pistachio metabolizable energy (the USDA feeding study)
2. Pistachio shells as a visual cue
3. In-shell versus shelled pistachios and caloric intake
4. Pistachio and body weight: randomised trials
5. Pistachio and satiety
6. Nut consumption and body weight: meta-analyses
7. Nut cell walls and fat bioaccessibility

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