Kiwifruit is a delightful and nutritious fruit adored by many due to its sweet and tangy taste, along with its ease of consumption.
This fruit packs a powerful nutritional punch, and incorporating it into your daily diet can offer numerous health benefits.
Kiwifruit is renowned for its exceptionally high vitamin C content, boasting a remarkable 62mg per 100g. This is nearly twice the vitamin C found in oranges and a staggering 21 times that of apples.
It's worth noting that the exact vitamin C content may slightly vary among different kiwifruit varieties.
What are the health advantages of consuming kiwifruit regularly?
1. Beauty and Skin Care: Kiwifruit is the skin's best friend, thanks to its abundance of vitamin C. Our skin's key building block is collagen, and vitamin C plays a vital role in its synthesis, maintaining skin elasticity and staving off the development of wrinkles.
Additionally, vitamin C serves as a potent antioxidant, fighting off excess free radicals and thwarting lipid peroxidation, further enhancing skin protection.
2. Gum Health: A deficiency in vitamin C can disrupt collagen synthesis, leading to slow wound healing, weakened capillary walls, and potential gum issues such as bleeding and loosening.
Ensuring a daily intake of one kiwifruit can contribute to overall gum health, averting problems like gum recession and tooth loss.
3. Preventing Constipation: Kiwifruit is a dietary fiber champion among fruits, containing 2.6g of insoluble dietary fiber per 100g. This surpasses apples by 1.5 times and bananas by 2.2 times.
Insoluble dietary fiber acts as a digestive booster, promoting the mechanical movement of the stomach and intestines, facilitating regular bowel movements, and preventing constipation. Eating the skin, if it's almost hairless, provides even more dietary fiber.
4. Bone Health: In addition to its impressive vitamin C content, kiwifruit is rich in vitamin K, which both contribute to excellent bone health and the prevention of osteoporosis.
Vitamin C deficiency can lead to collagen synthesis disorders, potentially causing osteoporosis due to poor bone matrix formation.
On the other hand, vitamin K encourages calcium deposition in bones, aiding in calcium absorption, stimulating osteoblasts, and inhibiting osteoclasts – all contributing to the prevention of bone fractures.
For optimum enjoyment, remember to store your kiwifruit wisely. If your kiwifruit is hard, keep it at room temperature alongside apples and bananas to allow it to ripen, becoming softer and sweeter.
If it's already slightly soft, refrigerate it at 4°C to slow down further softening, extend its shelf life, and preserve its valuable vitamin C content.
