For most kids, watermelon is a summer picnic feature. There are two ways kids normally enjoy this watery food, they will either dove in an spit out the pits or took time to remove the pits from the chunk before enjoy the cool sweetness without getting distracted by the pits. No matter how you used to enjoy your watermelon as a kid, it has always been a traditional summer treat.
However, it’s more than just treat but also provide a lot of health benefit to your body. Meat and rind of watermelon has long been used by traditional Chinese medicine to treat excess heat in the organ. The heat is not fever, but can be a precursor to many other problems such as inflammation and chronic autoimmune disease.
Health Benefits of Eating Watermelon
Let’s start with something obvious. Watermelon is red and like every other red fruits and vegetables, it also high in lycopene and beta-carotene. Lycopene has numerous health benefits including resisting prostate cancer and other cancers that occur with women as well, resolve fatty liver for both gender, and it’s a powerful antioxidant.
Beta-carotene also play a role in protecting against cancer. According to a Chinese study, women that include high amount of fresh vegetables and fruits, including watermelon in their diet has less incidents of breast cancer.
Then, how about the sugar spike? Watermelon is very sweet, does it have bad effect to blood sugar? According to a Danish study that involved 63 men and women diagnose with diabetes 2, medical advice that say people with diabetic and pre-diabetic with high blood sugar or metabolic disorder need to eat less fruit is wrong.
They concluded that the recommendation of eating less fruit as a part of standard medical nutrition therapy in overweight patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes had no effect on HbA1c, waist circumference, or weight loss. So they say that limiting the intake of fruit for patients with type 2 diabetes is not necessary.
Other studies that used watermelon extract showed that actually, in contrast with the medical advice watermelon helps prevent metabolic disorder that can cause diabetes type 2. Other studies also showed that L-citrulline and L-arginine that can be found in watermelon can improve cardiovascular health. They prevent endothelia dysfunction that decrease the flexibility of blood vessel and its ability to expand as needed. Simply put, watermelon is good for the health of your heart.
If you like to enjoy with the seeded watermelons, you can also try to eat the pits since they’re also a rich source of protein. But first you need to grind them up.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) also rank conventionally raised watermelon as the number 32 out of 48 vegetables and fruits with pesticide residue. Of course you can also choose organic watermelon. But if it’s too costly for you, then it’s okay to go for non-organic watermelons, since you’re not going to eat the rind anyway. Exterior spraying does not penetrate the rind, you can safely enjoy the pesticide free meat inside.
Now, you need to know about how to choose a watermelon that has a nice meat texture. There’s a simple way to determine if you’re choosing the right watermelon. Just knock or slap the watermelon and listen to the sound that resonates.
You can hold the watermelon next to your ear while you’re knocking or tapping it with another hand. Leave a watermelon that produces a thunky sound. That watermelon is too mushy. Choose one that has a vibrant hollow response since it should has a nice texture and taste
Source: www.realfarmacy.com
Another sources linked in Real Farmacy’s article:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com
http://www.womenshealthletter.com
http://www.womenshealthletter.com
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
http://www.greenmedinfo.com
http://www.womenshealthletter.com
http://www.womenshealthletter.com
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
http://www.greenmedinfo.com
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