Consumer Reports' Highest-Rated Healthy Nut Snack Is Packed With Nutrients

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While we love our Dollar Tree cookies and our barbecue-flavored potato chips, there's plenty of great things to be said about healthy snacking, too. If you're looking for something that packs a nutritious punch, check out Consumer Reports' list of best healthiest snack options, where one particular product earned the top spot with a score of 87 out of 100: We Got Nuts' Roasted Unsalted Almonds. 

Should you be interested in picking some up, the We Got Nuts almonds are listed on Amazon for $18.49 for a 2-pound bag. Almonds make a healthy snack because for a small food item — the average almond is less than 1 inch long — they contain an impressive amount of nutrition. A 1-ounce servingor about 23 almonds, contains approximately 3.5 grams of fiber, 6 grams of protein, around 6 grams of carbohydrates, and 14 grams of fat (of which 9 grams are monounsaturated, or the healthy kind). And in terms of your Daily Value (DV) of nutrition, almonds deliver nearly 50% of the vitamin E, 27% of manganese, and 18% of magnesium that you need every day.

In terms of calorie count, they are fairly calorie-dense. That ounce serving comes out to 164 calories, but this isn't even mentioning the other things they contain, like copper, phosphorus, and riboflavin (vitamin B2). The fiber in almonds helps you feel satiated for longer, and may also help you regulate cholesterol and blood sugar levels, too.

If you pick up a bag of the We Got Nuts' Roasted Unsalted Almonds, the possibilities are practically endless, aside from just eating them while watching television. You can incorporate them with dried fruits and other nuts for a nutrient-dense DIY trail mix (with potentially aphrodisiac-like side effects), but you can use them for cooking as well. Since they're already roasted, you won't need to bother toasting them in a pan, though warming them up will bring out some additional aromatics.

If I'm feeling particularly lazy and want to add more substance to a salad, I'll just toss a handful of almonds on a bed of leafy greens (plus whatever else I have in the fridge). But you can also roughly crush, chop, or food process them and mix into dishes like chicken salad or cereal, or use them as a garnish for any cooked white fish along with some lemon juice. Almonds also make a killer replacement for the otherwise more expensive pine nuts in Genovese pesto, and they're a key ingredient for the red pepper-based romesco sauce, which is something chef Bobby Flay likes to add to his scrambled eggs. There's plenty to love about almonds, so if you grab that 2-pound bag, it should be gone in no time, even if you're just munching on them as an easy snack.