The Average Indian Eats 1 Gram of Nuts a Day. The Guideline Is 30–40 g.

In a study of 124,329 adults across 16 countries, over half of Indian participants ate less than 30 g of nuts in an entire month.

You do not need badam and kaju to fix this. Moongphali, til, alsi and magaz cost a fraction and count the same.

That is not a small shortfall. It is roughly a 30× gap.

The Data

• India's median nut intake: 1 g/day (PURE study, 124,329 adults across 16 countries)
• 51.7% of Indian participants ate under 30 g of nuts in a whole month
• ICMR-NIN 2024 puts nuts & seeds at 30 g/day for women, 40 g for men — about 9% of your day's energy

Why It Matters

Per 28 g of nuts a day:

• 29% lower coronary heart disease risk
• 22% lower all-cause mortality
• 15% lower total cancer risk

Low nut and seed intake now ranks among the top dietary drivers of heart-disease deaths worldwide (GBD 2023).

Where The Gap Hides

4 badam on the kheer is a garnish — about 5 g. A sixth of your day.
Masala peanuts and salted kaju: the nut is fine, the salt and the palm-oil fry are not.
Kaju katli, chikki, dry-fruit laddoo: sugar and ghee dominate. That is mithai, not nuts.

Five Things To Do

1. Measure 30 g once. Fill a small katori lid. That is your daily handful — fix it to one meal.
2. Make groundnut the default. Cheapest nut in the country. Dry-roast a week's batch, no salt.
3. Grind a spoon of alsi or til into atta, curd, poha or chutney daily. Whole flax passes through undigested.
4. Buy plain. Nuts should be the first and nearly only ingredient on the label.
5. Swap, don't add. Trade the evening biscuits or namkeen for the handful, not on top of them.

You do not need badam and kaju to do this. Moongphali, til, alsi and magaz cost a fraction and count the same.

⚠️ Nut and seed allergy can be severe — if you or your child has ever reacted, do not self-experiment. Nuts are calorie-dense, so swap rather than add. On a restricted diet for kidney or gut disease, check portions with your doctor.

What a handful looks like in a week

• Monday: dry-roasted moongphali in a small katori instead of the 5 pm biscuits.
• Wednesday: a spoon of ground til stirred into curd or sprinkled over poha.
• Friday: a til chutney with your roti or paratha.
• Weekend: a mixed handful of groundnut, magaz and a few badam if you have them.

One katori lid of nuts, fixed to one meal, is easier to keep up than a rule about quantity.

The carousel

The five slides from our Instagram and X post — swipe through them, save them, share them.

Sources

1. ICMR-NIN, Dietary Guidelines for Indians 2024Table 1.6 — nuts 30 g/day for a sedentary adult woman, 40 g/day for a sedentary adult man; nuts and seeds at roughly 9% of daily energy. Guideline 7 names groundnut, walnut, almond, pistachio, flax, chia and other oilseeds. Slides 1, 2, 4, 5.
2. PURE study, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2023India's median nut intake of 1.0 g/day and the 51.7% of Indian participants eating under 30 g a month; the −23% death rate (HR 0.77, 95% CI 0.69–0.87) for the highest versus lowest nut eaters across 124,329 adults in 16 countries over a median 9.5 years. Slides 1, 2, 3.
3. Aune et al., BMC Medicine, 2016Dose–response meta-analysis: per 28 g of nuts a day, coronary heart disease RR 0.71 (−29%), all-cause mortality RR 0.78 (−22%), total cancer RR 0.85 (−15%). Slide 3.
4. Global Burden of Disease 2023, Nature Medicine, 2026Suboptimal diet accounted for 4.06 million ischaemic heart disease deaths globally in 2023, with low intake of nuts and seeds among the leading dietary contributors at 9.87 deaths per 100,000. Slide 3 callout band.

General information, not medical advice. Figures are taken from the sources above; if you have a medical condition, speak to your doctor before changing your diet or activity.