Pomegranates: A Fad with Fantastic Health Benefits

6/18/08 Posted in News  |  0 Comments

You see them at breakfast in your muffins, at lunch in your salads and in your martini’s at dinner. They have even been known to be in desserts and their name can be seen everywhere in the juice isle.

Pomegranates seem to be rising stars in the fruit isle. Not only are they a great fad to incorporate into a dish for a picnic but they are also extremely healthy for you, research shows.

Pomegranates are considered a symbol of health, fertility and rebirth. Even though pomegranates can only be harvested for a few months per year, October to January, pomegranate juice is found year round online or in your supermarket.

To get juice from a pomegranate, one has to squeeze the fleshy sweet part of the fruit. Drinking pomegranate juice is the easiest way to soak up all this fruit has to offer.

Antioxidants are part of what makes this fruit outshine others. Pomegranates contain polyphenols, tannins and anthocyanins. With these three antioxidants combined this fruit is said to contain more antioxidants than even red wine or green tea.

Research has shown that drinking just one glass of the juice a day provides adults 50 percent of their daily recommended amounts of vitamins A, C, and E. It also contains large amounts of potassium.

More recent research has shown that drinking one glass of pomegranate juice a day for three months helps to improve the amount of oxygen getting to the heart muscle of those suffering from coronary heart disease, according to the American Journal of the College of Cardiology.

Also, according to the National Academy of Sciences, pomegranate compounds might be able to prevent prostate cancer or slow it’s growth in the future. Studies are still being done to verify this. But other reports have shown that the juice may be useful in reducing the risk of breast cancer for some.

Even arthritis may yield to the power of pomegranates. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University have reported that tissue cultures of human cartilage cells respond to pomegranate extract allowing Inflammation to be reduced and the enzymes that break down cartilage to become less active, according to the Journal of Nutrition.

As if you need anymore medical hype to get you excited about this fruit and it’s juice, it has also been found that the fruit, like aspirin, can help to keep blood platelets from clumping together to form unwanted clots.

On the downside, like grapefruit, pomegranates have been shown to interfere with certain medications. Some researchers have suggested that those who have had problems with grapefruit should be weary of pomegranates as well.

So now that you know the facts, go ahead and start drinking pomegranate juice today, but remember, drink to your health.