You Are What You Eat: Orange Power
Each week, we'll be offering original recipes and unique ways to use those Super Foods that pack nutritional power. After all, you are what you eat -- make it count! Vitamin C is vital for the normal growth and development of the human body. It repairs tissues, helps wounds heal, and forms blood vessels and collagen -- an important protein used to make skin, scar tissue, and tendons. Vitamin C is good for cartilage, bones, teeth, and it's a rich and powerful antioxidant, instrumental in blocking the damage caused by free radicals. Pretty super, eh? Yep, but we only benefit from the power of vitamin C by ingesting it.
Our bodies don't manufacture or store vitamin C, so we must consume plenty of vitamin-C rich foods in our daily diets. Miss out on this potent property and your deficiency may lead to dry and splitting hair, rough and scaly skin, nosebleeds, anemia, weight gain due to slowed metabolism, and even scurvy. Get enough and you'll protect yourself from life-threatening illnesses like heart disease and cancer.
Although all fruits and vegetables contain some amount of vitamin C, oranges offer the most readily available supply of it. The orange, a Superfood with about 60 calories, is also famed for its 170 cancer-fighting phytochemicals and 60 flavonoids, as well as its ability to reduce inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and asthma. A daily orange will also help combat diabetes and obesity, and its flavonoid hesperetin and the compound herperidin lower blood pressure and cholesterol. There's more: An orange's peel contains limonene, which may ward off skin cancer.
Embrace the orange and you'll get 93 percent of all the vitamin C you need. Don't just eat the orange, though. Try the membrane of skin between the segments -- it's high in soluble fibre, which can help mop up fats in the bloodstream -- and when baking, add orange zest for an extra health zing.
Orange you ready to cook up some power potions? Give these recipes a try.
Salmon in Orange Sauce
Orange you ready to cook up some power potions? Give these recipes a try.
Salmon in Orange Sauce
Healthy Orange Chicken
Curried Zucchini and Orange Soup
For more lowdown on the orange, see what Sunkist has to say about this super citrus fruit.
Starbucks revamps its breakfast menu
Fructose makes you fat
10 top foods for a good night's sleep
