I love eating nuts and pistachios top the list.

Though pistachio nuts are quite expensive around here, whenever I can get a pack (not always though), I really do squeeze them into my grocery budget.

I can eat them continuously in one sitting, without getting tired of eating them, unlike peanuts after a handful you'd feel like you're going to puke (or sit on the toilet for some 30 minutes!)...you know.

There might be good news to pistachio lovers out there: a four-week pistachio diet can help reduce cholesterol levels in people with moderate hypercholesterolemia, without weight gain - as recently reported in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

According to Dr James Cooper of George Mason University who conducted the new study:

"A diet with a moderate amount of healthful monounsaturated fat, like the kind found in pistachios, is a more effective way to prevent heart disease than reducing overall fat intake."

Findings also revealed no change in blood pressure, BMI or weight levels in those on the pistachio diet -- supporting recent research claims that pistachios are a healthy snack option.

[This follows a 2005 study, published by the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry (Vol 53, pp. 9436-9445), which proved pistachios held the richest source of phytosterols in snack foods, believed to reduce blood cholesterol.]

Four weeks of pistachio diet (15% of caloric intake were from pistachio nuts) is about 2-3 ounces of pistachios per day, according to the article.

Find more details from the full report.