Q: I ve heard nuts are a good source of protein but they contain much fat also.How many nuts can i eat a day so i take the necessary protein they can give me and avoid the mass fat the have.I use them as a meal-snack along with some fruits.

A: Raw or plain-roasted nuts are an excellent nutricious food! As you said, however, they are very high in fat and in calories. Depending on the kind of nut, it'll have from 5 to 10 times more calories from fat than from protein. Because optimal fat-burning (or muscle-building) diets will have roughly the same number of calories from protein as from fats, nuts should not be a major source of protein for you. Instead, consider them a source of healthy fats in your diet and take the protein as a bonus.

How many nuts is too much? Again, you should view nuts, as well as all other foods, as part of your overall healthy balanced diet. An ideal fat-burning diet would have 40% of calories from protein, 30% from carbs, 30% from fats. Very few people actually manage to eat that much protein and I don't know what your overall diet looks like, so I'll have to make some assumptions... Let's assume your diet now has 2000 calories broken down into 20% protein, 40% carbs, and 40% fats. Then 40% means that you get about 800 calories from fats. In terms of nuts, that's about 4 handfuls (4-5 ounces). But, of course, nuts are unlikely to (and should not, for variety's sake) be your exclusive source of fats, so more likely that you can eat about 2 handfuls (2 ounces) of them throughout the day.

Those 2 handfuls will only give you around 10 grams of protein which is only a small part of your overall protein intake. Going back to our assumption of 20% of 2000 calories from protein, you should be getting 100 grams of protein total during the day. And remember, ideally your protein intake should be 40% or 200 grams for a 2000-calorie diet. So you can see that nuts will contribute very little to your overall protein intake.

Hopefully that helps you a little bit in deciding how many nuts to eat. Again, they're an excellent nutricious food -- just don't rely on them for a lot of protein. If you don't know which nuts to eat, I recommend almonds (raw or dry-roasted) -- they have a lot of calcium and monounsaturated fat (which should make up the most of your fat intake. Other nuts usually have mostly polyunsaturated Omega-6 fat).