We live in an age plagued by a series of serious afflictions - such as cancer or Alzheimer's - and when conventional medicine fails to provide us with satisfactory answers, we often turn to mother nature for a healthy dose of disease-fighting beneficial nutrients. More and more people nowadays are taking the "natural route" both to complement the drugs they are prescribed by their doctors (when they are diagnosed with a disease) and to help their bodies fight off the negative influences that come with their lifestyle, eating habits, work environment and so on. And as always, nature has a lot of surprises in store for those who have the time to look into all the benefits we can derive from some of its readily-available products.

Which gets us to the much-hyped super foods. Whether it's asparagus, figs, cauliflower or mushrooms, we've all read and heard a little - or more than a little - about their beneficial effects on everything from our hair to our immune systems, arthritis or heart disease. In a series of articles, we'll try to discover what each of these wonders of the grocery world is all about and what "super foods" can do for our bodies - so be sure to stay tuned and read on. In this particular article, we'll talk about almonds and why we should definitely make them a big part of our daily regime.

The deal on almonds

Delicately flavored and extremely versatile, almonds come with the added benefit of being available throughout the year to make for a healthy, tasty addition to our healthy diets. Almonds are at the height of their season in mid-summer, but we can easily find them packaged all year round. Although most of us believe that almonds are nuts, they are in fact the seed of the fruit of the almond tree, a medium-size tree with scented pink and white flowers.

Almonds are the oxymoron of nutrition: they are high-fat and yet extremely beneficial for our health. Almonds are high in monounsaturated fats, the same type of health-friendly fats that are found in olive oil and have been repeatedly associated with a lower risk of developing heart conditions, mainly due to the antioxidant properties of Vitamin E which they contain. Almonds have been proved to lower cholesterol and provide a healthy source of magnesium and potassium for our organisms. Indeed, just ¼ cup of almonds contains almost 99 mg of magnesium (24.7% of the recommended daily dose) and 257 mg of potassium.

To get the maximum of benefits from your daily dose of almonds, it's best to eat them whole, as the flavonoids contained by almond skins along with the vitamin E in their meat actually double their antioxidant effects. Almond skins contain no less than 20 potent antioxidant flavonoids, so it's a huge waste to throw the skins away.

Finally, despite being high in (beneficial) fats, almonds have been proved to help us lose weight - and keep the pounds off once we're off the diet as such. "Frequent nut consumption was associated with a reduced risk of weight gain (5 kg or more). These results support the recommendation of nut consumption as an important component of a cardio-protective diet and also allay fears of possible weight gain", a recent study confirms. The obvious conclusion to all this is that if you didn't previously favor almonds too much, now you have no excuse to exclude them from your daily diet - as they really fit the "super food" profile.