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Fruit -
Fruit 2008
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Written by Frank Mangano
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Tuesday, 15 July 2008 22:21 |
No ‘Fuzzy’ Matter
As a health and nutrition expert, people come to me looking for information about food and health that they wouldn’t know otherwise. But at the risk of selling myself short about my health knowledge, there are times when facts about fruits and vegetables escape my attention.
One of those times occurred last week when I discovered some of the lesser-known facts about a fruit I seldom eat: the kiwi.
Now, I have nothing against the kiwi. Nothing at all. It’s just that there are so many other fruits I enjoy eating that, sadly, kiwi has gotten lost in the shuffle. But now that I’ve become better informed about the kiwi, the kiwi is now atop my nutritional deck of cards, if you will. Here’s why:
To start, in terms of caloric content, kiwis are a great get – one kiwi has a mere 45 calories! In fact, if you look at a nutritional chart for kiwis, the nutritional information is based on two kiwis rather than one.
But don’t think that eating two kiwis is what you need if you want to get the most nutritional bang for your buck. You can go ahead and eat two of them, but just one kiwi is so chock full of vitamins and minerals that one will suffice. Allow the facts to elaborate:
- Many know that potatoes have as much potassium as bananas. But did you also know that kiwis have more potassium than bananas? Twenty percent more, in fact.
- Kiwis have more vitamin C than oranges. Just one kiwi yields 115 percent of your recommended daily allowance.
- A study out of Rutgers University found kiwi to be the most nutritionally-dense fruit of the “27 most commonly eaten fruits“ tested.
- Lutein, a carotenoid proven to be invaluable in maintaining eye health, is abundant in kiwis. Only corn beats out kiwis in lutein content.
- The reach of heart disease is not restricted to the elderly; almost 150,000 people that died from heart disease in 2004 were under the age of 65.
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But the benefits of kiwis don’t stop there. A study published in the journal Thorax shows that among children with asthma, the children who ate kiwis and other citrus fruits daily (5-7 servings per week) exhibited far fewer asthma-related symptoms than those who ate them only periodically (once a week). For instance, frequent kiwi eaters were 44 percent less likely to wheeze, 32 percent less likely to have shortness of breath and 25 percent less likely to have chronic cough. Asthma is the most common chronic condition among children in the United States and make up nine million of the 20 million people diagnosed with asthma, according to the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology.
The peak season for kiwis is at the end of the summer season, late August to early September. But if you can’t wait that long, kiwis are available in supermarkets throughout the year. Selecting a ripe kiwi is not dissimilar to how you select a cantaloupe: they should have some give to them when squeezing but should not be so soft that you can poke your finger through its skin. But unlike cantaloupe, you can eat the skin off a kiwi (yes, this is news to me as well). The skin of a kiwi has lots of fiber; just rub off its fuzzy exterior under water.
So, if you’re new to kiwi, jump on board the kiwi bandwagon. It can be eaten as-is, or be used in a more imaginative way, like in a garden salad, as a meat marinade or as a sandwich topper. However, like avocado, it’s best to eat a kiwi upon cutting into it, not later in the preparation process. This is because the acids within a kiwi cause it to soften and spoil shortly after being cut.
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