Avocado or some people call it “alligator pear” is a one of the most nutritious food, some people try to avoid it for it’s high fat content, but people must know that 1 medium avocado about 200 g has 322 calories and has 30 g of fat but most of the fat is monounsaturated fat which helps lower LDL, and cholesterol, plus its high nutritional value, it has a about 20 of vitamins and minerals including vitamin K, folate that helps lower the risk of heart attack which makes avocado a very heart-friendly food, it also has potassium, vitamin B6, vitamin C, and fiber as well.

Avocados contain potassium even more then bananas which can help to reduce risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. Oleic acid a monounsaturated fat is a very important content in avocado that may help lower cholesterol, it contains omega-3 in addition to vitamin E, and beta carotene, which forms vitamin A.

You can see how much 1 avocado can provide you with vitamins and minerals of the recommended daily value DV% through the attached picture.

Photo source: whfoods.com

Avocado is also a good baby food, it’s tender, mashable, almost free-sodium and free cholesterol and it is good for the baby to its content of lots af vitamins and minerals as I named them previously.

Also avocado has a moderate amount of alpha-carotene which is best absorbed in the presence of fat, since avocado is a natural source of monounsaturated fat makes an ideal, self-contained heart health food package. Like other carotenoids, its antioxidant power help it to protect against oxidation of bad cholesterol (LDL) in the body so reducing the risk of atherosclerosis over time.

How much to eat?

1/2 a medium avocado weighs 2 1/2 oz (flesh only) serve with slice fruits or tomatoes or in salads as guacomale.

Give it a try, use mashed avocados instead of spreading mayo or butter or cream cheese on your bagel or sandwich, it really makes difference in calorie content plus you will be taking healthy fats instead of saturated fat and maybe trans fat. So avocado may be included in a healthy diet as a substitution to bad fats.

Since avocado is high in calories so you have to eat it in moderation, eating anything should be in moderation even healthy foods, because too much of any food will lead to high calorie content at the end.

]]> http://intodiet.com/2009/05/15/avocado/feed/ 1 http://intodiet.com/2009/05/12/morning-banana-diet/ http://intodiet.com/2009/05/12/morning-banana-diet/#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 23:24:47 +0000 riham http://intodiet.com/?p=298

What is “morning banana diet”?

One of the latest fad diets has recently come up in Japan and it’s called “morning banana diet” it says that eat couple of bananas at morning with cup of milk and basiclly you can eat whatever you want the rest of the day and that suppose to help you lose weight, ofcourse there is no research shows that bananas help in weight loss and studies on various other banana diets came up with same conclusion that banana doesn’t help significantly with weight loss.

Bananas themselves are very healthy food they have alot of vitamins and minerals like vitamin C, potassium, vitamin B6, they have alot of fiber. Also bananas are low in calories 1 medium banana has probably about 120 to 160 calories maybe it sounds alot compared to other fruits, but compared to other foods like big piece of juicy steak or chips bag it has much lower calories plus you get more nutrition from it, and with its extra fiber will help you feel more full.

So bananas can be included in a healthy diet to achieve weight loss but bananas bythemselves they are not going to cause you lose extra weight, they are not going to do anything to let you boost your metabolism or cause your body to lose more fat

Conclusion: Bananas are not going to help you increase your weight loss but it can be included in a healthy diet to help you achieve weight loss.