Let's say you really need to find reliable information about the best diet for high blood pressure or heart disease or diabetes.

Where do you go? You go to a website sponsored by Big Pharma that wants to sell you pills to fix your problem or do you want to treat the cause?

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast with the latest peer-reviewed research on the best ways to eat healthy and live longer.

It's time today for the Nutrition Facts Grab Bag where we look at the latest science and whole variety of topics.

In our first story, we find out if the health benefits of peanut butter include longevity.

According to the largest study of risk factors for death in human history, a poor diet causes more death than anything.

Sigrets only kill about 8 million people a year whereas humaninities diet kills millions more.

What's the worst aspects of our diet? Process meat, twinkies, soda, no.

The five deadliest things about our diet are inadequate fruit intake, not enough fruit, not enough whole grains, not enough vegetables, too much salt, and not enough nuts and seeds.

Nuts should come as no surprise since interventional trials have shown that eating nuts improves artery function and arterial diseases like heart disease are among our leading killers.

But that's not all nuts can do. They may also improve blood sugar control, lower cholesterol, suppress inflammation, reduce oxidative stress, and feed our friendly gut flora.

All nuts are just tree nuts. What about peanuts? What about peanut butter?

About 50% of peanut consumption in the US is through peanut butter, but the association between peanut butter and mortality has not been thoroughly evaluated.

To get that granular though, we can call on the NIH AARP study. It's the largest perspective health and diet study in history that followed more than a half million people since the 1990s.

And, nut consumption in general appeared to protect against all cause mortality, meaning nut eaters live on average longer lives, and specifically are less likely to die from cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, infectious causes, so maybe they help them in these well, liver disease, and kidney disease.

However, no such associations were found for peanut butter. So when it comes to living longer, peanut butter doesn't seem to count. Why?

Well, we know peanut butter consumers tend to eat more meat, smoke cigarettes, and we're less likely to exercise, but the researchers control for all that.

Red meat, white meat, tobacco, you exercise, and vegetables, fruits, and whole grain. So it's not like the peanut butter eaters were just eating more white bread sandwiches or something.

The researchers didn't control for sugar though, so it's possible they could have been eating more sugary jelly.

It could also be the processing that goes into making peanut butter, the added trans, fat, oil, salt, and sugar, but regular nuts are also often needed with added oil, sugar, and salt.

Could it just be the peanuts themselves? I mean, technically they aren't nuts, so maybe they just don't have the same benefits, but no, a meta analysis of all such studies found the same but nut-like benefits for whole peanuts, just not peanut butter.

Well, one thing missing from even no salt, oil-free, sugar-free nut and seed butters is intact cellular structure.

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