It was one of the craziest findings I’d ever seen. Researchers from—where else?—Brazil gave ten men and women a single meal containing between one and eight Brazil nuts. Amazingly, compared to the control group who ate no nuts at all, just a single serving of four Brazil nuts almost immediately improved cholesterol levels. LDL—the “bad”—cholesterol levels were a staggering twenty points lower just nine hours after eating the Brazil nuts.51 Even drugs don’t work nearly that fast.52