Super Food: The Orange
The orange is an incredibly popular fruit. Not only because it tastes so great, is delicious as a fresh juice and the whole bus enjoys the smell of the orange when one person is peeling. Also because it is a super healthy fruit.
Many people would do well to take a good dose of oranges when they have a cold before they go on medication. Especially many people know that the orange contains a lot of vitamin C. But there is more, much more!
100 grams of orange contains as much as 50 mg of vitamin C. So per orange that’s about 100 mg, which is already 30 mg more than the recommended daily intake! Vitamin C is, among other things, very important for your resistance, wound healing and helps protect you against many different diseases.
Furthermore, the orange consists mainly of water, natural sugars, lots of fiber and other vitamins. We also see that it contains several minerals. Potassium, for example, plays an important role in regulating blood pressure and proper muscle contraction, and calcium is good for strong bones and teeth. But oranges are good for something else. They contain a lot of bioflavonoids.
Bioflavonoids what?
Bioflavonoids is the collective name for a large group of vegetable substances whose effect resembles that of vitamins. When the orange is still on the plant, bioflavonoids act as antioxidants. They protect the plant from light and radiation.
When people ingest these bioflavonoids they also work as antioxidants. That is, they protect the body from attacks by free radicals (in short, aggressive oxygen particles that cause damage deep inside the body’s cells). Most bioflavonoids are found in the white flesh and pips of the orange. This is one of the reasons why it is slightly healthier to eat an orange, rather than squeezing it.
The benefits at a glance
The orange is a true miracle fruit. In addition to the benefits listed above, it is also good for the following:
They give you soft smooth skin. This is due to the vitamin C that keeps the tissues that attach the skin to the body strong.
They help prevent certain forms of rheumatism. This was found in a 2003 study in which the women who ate the most oranges had the lowest risk of certain forms of rheumatism.
They may help protect you from lung cancer. In 2008, researchers found that smokers who ate oranges five times a week were much less likely to develop lung cancer than those who did not eat oranges.
They help protect you from heart attacks.
And they help prevent anemia. This is because vitamin C helps the body absorb iron from plant foods.
How to choose the right orange
There are different types of oranges with different properties. The health benefits for each kind are about the same, but in use they differ. For example, choose Valencian oranges if you want to squeeze them and get a navel orange if you want to peel it. This orange has a sort of protruding navel on one side. For this navel, the bigger it is, the sweeter the orange will be.
Sometimes you are lucky and you get a blood orange. These are red inside and so it looks like there is blood inside. This is certainly not the case. What gives the orange its red color is not entirely clear, but it certainly has something to do with the weather. Blood oranges have a slightly softer taste and their color makes them very nice to use in different dishes.
All in all.
All in all, it seems clear to me: Do your body a favor and eat oranges!
Originally published at https://www.akwa.be.