Avocado

Avocado benefits are huge and they are desirable for the production of many ingredients like guacamole, something very used in the parties to accompany meals. But not only for guacamole, they are being very used on salads, wraps and even smoothies, so you can find a lot of avocado recipes. All this makes these delicious tropical fruits a super food for its variability.

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Avocado, fruit or vegetable?

A lot of people wonder if is avocado a fruit or vegetable. This tropical fruit has gained a lot of popularity for its versatility, its nutrients and delicious and creamy flavor. The avocados are fruits, the botanists specify that they are just a large berry with only one and big seed.

Although the avocado is a fruit, is not sweet like the fruits we know, but is defined as a fruit anyway. They are grown on trees with tropical weather, they are nativa from Mexico but Colombia is producing a great quantity of different kind of avocados, like hass avocado, a little one of the same family, has become very popular and has a great flavor too, is so creamy and has a round shape.

So if next time they ask you if is avocado a fruit or a vegetable, you already know what to answer them with certainty.

Calories in avocado

Avocados are really healthy, but they are not low in fat and calories.

The fat of the avocado is healthy?

Avocados carbs and fat are high, but it’s not the same saturated fat you can find in dairy products, like the red meat and fast food. The American Heart Association recommends reducing the saturated fat in your diet to take care of your heart.

Calories in hass avocado is a little bit high but has a few amount of saturated fat, very few. Most of the fat you can find in avocados are monounsaturated fatty acids, these kind of fat can reduce your total cholesterol and you bad cholesterol, and the monounsaturated fat can increase your good cholesterol.

Avocado benefits

When you include fruits in your diet, your health is going to grow always and you will reduce the risk of a lot of diseases. Here we will see some health benefits of avocado.

A lot of studies have found that a diet where you include fruits like avocados can help you to prevent the risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and more diseases, this fruit can help you to improve the health and complexion of your hair, skin, increase energy and get lower weight.

1. Good for heart

The avocado has 25 milligrams per ounce of beta-sitosterol, a natural plan with sterol. When you consume beta-sitosterol regularly, this can help you to keep your heart healthy and maintain a correct cholesterol levels.

2. Good for osteoporosis prevention

Half avocado can contain 25% of Vitamin K, this is the daily quantity recommended to consume. For many people this vitamin is not very important but actually is good for the bones.

When you think in vitamins for the bones, you always think in calcium and vitamin D, but vitamin K is necessary for bones too, all these nutrients together can keep your bones healthy, the consumption of vitamin K can increase the absorption of calcium.

3. Avocados have a lot of nutrients

40 grams of this tropical fruit contains:

• 64 calories
• less than a gram of sugar
• almost 3 grams of fiber
• 6 grams of fat
• 3.4 grams of carbohydrate

They are rich in vitamins like C, E, K and B6, contains riboflavin, folate, niacin, pantothenic acid, potassium, magnesium and omega-3.

All the calories you can find in an avocado, comes from fat, but don’t be scared, this delicious fruit is very healthy even if they have fat, as we explained previously, they have monounsaturated fat, which is not bad for you. At the moment you eat healthy fat, your brain receive a signal to turn off your desire of eating. So if you were still wondering if are avocados good for you, here are some reasons to believe it is.

4. Good for your vision

They are rich in lutein and zeaxanthin, these two phytochemicals can provide antioxidant protection to help minimize any damage in the eyes, even the UV light coming from the sun.

The monounsaturated fatty acid can support the absorption of other beneficial antioxidants, like beta-carotene, so when you consume this tropical fruit, you can reduce the risk of getting age related macular degeneration, this is one of the greatest avocado benefits.

5. Cancer

One of the most important benefits of eating avocado is the prevention of different types of cancer. When you consume food rich in folate, it can help protect you from cancer of colon, cervical and pancrea.

But the way this can prevent and reduce the risk is currently unknown, some researchers believe that folate can protect against mutation of DNA and RNA during the division of cells.

The avocados can play an important role in the prevention and treatment of cancer, this is because of the phytochemicals extracted from avocados can selectively inhibit the growth of precancerous and cancerous cells, and stimulate the proliferation of immune system cells called lymphocytes.

6. Reduce the risk of depression

Those foods which contain a high level of folate can reduce the risk of having depression, this happens because the folate helps to prevent the growth of homocysteine, a sustain that can jeopardize the circulation and delivery of nutrients to the brain.

If our bodies have an excess of homocysteine, this can affect the production of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine, these substances help us to regulate the mood, appetite and sleep.

7. Healthy babies

Folate is an important substance for those women who are pregnant. A correct consumption of this substance can reduce the risk of miscarriage and neural tube defects.

A research done by McGill University found that mice that were conceived with sperms without folate had a higher percent of defects (30% higher) than those who were conceived with sperms with folate. This means that those little mice who were born with folate sperms were healthier than those who didn’t have folate.

The conclusion is that the avocado healthy benefits are a lot and really good ones.

How to keep the avocado fresh

The flesh of an avocado can turn brown when you cut it because of an enzyme that oxidizes when is in contact when air. This doesn’t mean that is bad, you can scrape off the top brown layer to see the fresh and green layer.

You can use a lot of tricks to keep the avocado fresh and here we will show you how to store avocados.

You can sprinkling it with lemon juice, cover them with wax paper. Storing avocados in the fridge is a god way to keep avocados fresh for up to two weeks, if you are going to use or eat just the half of avocado, leave the pit i the other half that you won’t eat immediately.

If you will use the avocado for guacamole, store the pit in the leftovers, then store the half of avocado in a sealable plastic bag and take out all the air you can, put the guacamole in an airtight container in the fridge.

Here we show you how to preserve avocado, these are other tricks you can use to keep them fresh for at least 72 hours:

• Use Olive Oil to paint a thin layer onto the top of the half avocado. This technique creates a natural barrier to protect them from oxidation.
• The Lemon Juice can help to inhibit the oxidation, you can rub the lemon on the top of the half avocado or drain some on the top of the guacamole. This not only keep you avocado fresh, but will add some lemon flavor to make it more delicious and is one of the best and most used ways of keeping avocado fresh.
• Use a large chunk of onion on the bottom of the container, put the avocado with the face up on top.

Preserving avocado is not difficult, you just can’t let them be in contact with air to prevent the antioxidant. The best option for avocado storage is definitely the fridge.