Avocados Are a Wonder Food!

by Cheryl Mayor People can be really lukewarm about avocados. If you don’t know when they are at peak ripeness, they can taste weird and have a waxy texture.

Until recently, people didn’t choose avocados partly because they thought they had no flavor, but mostly because they thought they were high in fat and cholesterol.

We all needed additional information to make a healthy choice about this fruit.

AVOCADOS BENEFITS

If you eat a ripe avocado that is neither too green nor overripe, it is a delicacy! The flavors are wonderful, and the texture is so creamy!

Do you know how healthy avocados are for you? They have great benefits, especially for vegetarians.

One of the greatest challenges if you follow a vegetarian or mostly vegetarian diet is to get enough high-quality protein.

Avocados provide a complete protein! While the avocado ripens on the tree, the sun breaks down the proteins in it into easily digestible amino acids.

Your body needs all 18 essential amino acids to create complete proteins, and you can get this complete protein from eating avocados!

Avocados are also a wonderful source of healthy fat, and we now know healthy fats are essential for good health, especially for good brain health.

Studies have shown that eating avocados has beneficial effects on cardio-metabolic risk factors and has produced lower levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) or the “bad” cholesterol.

All this evidence makes eating avocados a win-win! But how do you eat them? You can easily incorporate them into your meals, so feel free to get creative.

Slice them on a salad; mash them and use them as a spread in a sandwich; top your scrambled eggs with them; you can even make a chocolate mousse pudding with avocados, and of course, there’s always guacamole.

If you’re on a budget and trying to eat as much organic produce as you can, it’s good to know that so far, avocados are on the Environmental Working Group’s “clean 15” foods list.

One final bit of advice: eating an avocado at the right time can really make you love them. Buy several at a time, keep a couple in the fridge, and put them out a day or two before you need to have them at the proper ripeness.

That way, you will always have a beautiful, creamy avocado ready when you need it!

Cheryl Major is a Certified Nutrition & Wellness Consultant. She blogs about health, clean eating to lose weight, feel better, and deal with depression, as well as how to use food as medicine.