Then there’s the fecal-excretion theory. Many of the cell walls of chewed almonds, for example, remain intact in the gastrointestinal tract. In other words, it’s possible a lot of the calories in nuts just never get digested and wind up in your waste because you didn’t chew well enough. Both of these theories were put to the test by an international group of researchers who gave participants either a half cup of unshelled peanuts or a half cup of peanuts ground into peanut butter. If either the Pistachio Principle or the fecal-extraction theory were correct, the peanut-butter group would gain
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