Let Them Eat Nuts (and Popcorn)! Neither Causes Diverticular Complications

Patients with diverticulosis often are instructed to reduce their intake of popcorn, nuts, and corn to prevent diverticular complications. This advice is based on a rather intuitive notion that colonic luminal trauma from these foods might initiate inflammation or bleeding within diverticula. In a prospective cohort study of 47,228 male health professionals without prior diagnoses of diverticular disease, inflammatory bowel disease, or non–skin cancer, investigators explored this issue. At regular intervals, from 1986 through 2004, participants provided health-related information and completed food-frequency questionnaires.

During 18 years of follow-up, 801 incident cases of diverticulitis and 383 incident cases of diverticular bleeding occu…