 Still, nuts are the best source of fat. But what if you have diverticulosis? Doctors typically tell patients with diverticulosis that they should avoid nuts. Diverticulosis is a disease caused by inadequate dietary fiber intake. Just as if you don't get enough vitamin C, you can develop scurvy. If you don't get enough fiber, you can develop diverticulosis, which are outpouchings from your colon. When we don't eat enough fiber every day to soften and bulk up our stool, we may have to strain during a bowel movement. And after a lifetime of straining, you can literally blow out these pockets from your colon. More than half of older Americans have diverticulosis, as people don't eat enough whole plant foods. The only place fiber is found. This is what they look like on the inside. This is what they look like on the outside. This should be a smooth, round tube. And if one of these offshoot blowout tunnels gets inflamed, it looks more like this and this. You don't have to be a doctor to realize that's not what our colon should look like. And if we keep it up, it can eat right through, and we can blow a hole in our colon and die. All because we ate too many refined foods and animals, and not enough whole plants. But back to the original question, though. Sometimes on autopsy you can find nuts, seeds, or pieces of corn or popcorn stuck in those pockets, which led to this theory that they may be what triggered the inflammation. So the conventional wisdom has been to tell elderly folks to stay away from these foods. But at the same time, the lack of plant foods caused the whole problem in the first place. So do we really want to tell people to cut down? Well, what does the latest research show? Stay away from these foods. Fact or fiction? According to a landmark new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, not only fiction, but those with diverticulosis eating nuts and popcorn had lower rates of inflammation.