12 Shocking Facts About The Avocado Fruit [3]

The avocado is a rather unique type of fruit. Most fruits consist primarily of carbohydrate, while avocado is high in healthy fats.

Numerous studies show that it has powerful beneficial effects on health.

Avocados are often categorized according to the ancestral origins in the West Indies, Guatemala, or Mexico. In fact, avocados were also native to other parts of Central and South America, where they have been cultivated for food use for several thousand years.

Despite the age of this fruit, it is a wonder how a lot of humans are yet to know the amazing nutritional value of this wonderful fruit. Well here are but a few:

7. Avocado for Pregnant Women

Avocado is a particularly important food for women who are pregnant, and those trying to be, due to its high concentrations of folate (also known as folic acid).

This B vitamin is needed to prevent birth defects like spina bifida and doctors advise women to get high amounts of folate both before and during pregnancy.

Avocados contain around 45 mcg of folate per half a cup, which is more than any other fruit, making them a great food source for moms to be.

Vitamin K is another valuable nutrient found in high concentrations in avocados that benefit women during pregnancy and their future babies.

Vitamin K deficiency-related bleeding, or VKDB, is a condition where newborn babies cannot stop bleeding as their blood doesn’t contain enough vitamin K. Getting more high vitamin K foods in your diet during pregnancy can help pass more of it onto your unborn child.

8. Cardiovascular Health

Coronary heart disease is still the biggest killer in the USA and UK and it is essentially a disease of inflammation.

Many experts now believe that high consumption of pro-inflammatory processed vegetable oils are a significant risk factor in cardiovascular disease. They adviselowering polyunsaturated fat intake and increasing the amount of healthy monounsaturated fatty acids in your diet.

Avocado is an excellent source of monounsaturated oleic acid. Research has shown this beneficial form of fat reduces dangerous LDL cholesterol in the blood at the same time as increasing the more beneficial HDL cholesterol.

Eating a high fat food like avocado can actually lower the amount of fat in your blood clearly shows that all fats are not equal. It’s important to get enough of the right ones if you value your health and, as you’ll see ahead, doing so can have many benefits for losing weight, improving your skin and much more.

Avocado oil is an excellent cooking oil, much healthier than polyunsaturated vegetable oil and even better than olive oil, particularly for high-temperature frying.

9. Avocados Help You Absorb Other Nutrients From Plant Foods

When it comes to nutrients, the total amount of them is not the only thing that matters.We also need to be able to absorb them… move them from the digestive tract and into the body, where they can be used.

Some nutrients are “fat soluble,” meaning that they need to be combined with fat in order to be utilized.This includes vitamins A, D, E and K… along with antioxidants like carotenoids.

One study showed that adding avocado or avocado oil to either salad or salsa can increase antioxidant absorption by 2.6 to 15-fold. So… not only is avocado highly nutritious, it can dramatically increase the nutrient value of other plant foods that you are eating.

This is an excellent reason to always include a healthy fat source when you eat veggies. Without it, a lot of the beneficial plant nutrients will go to waste.

To be continued…