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Onions - Overview

Onions
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It’s hard to imagine a culinary life without onions. A staple of so many cuisines, onions lend a unique savory and pungent flavor to an endless variety of dishes. Eaten cooked and raw, available all year round, onions are hard to avoid and once you know about their considerable health benefits, it’s difficult to imagine why anyone would want to. While onions health promoting abilities have long been recognized, it’s only recently that their considerable curative abilities have been conclusively demonstrated and thus their elevation to SuperFood status.

Cultivated for over five thousand years, onions are native to Asia and the Middle East. Their name – onion – comes from the Latin unis meaning one or single and it refers to the fact that onions, unlike their close relatives garlic, have only one bulb. Onions are now the second most important horticultural crop after tomatoes.

Onions are a major source of two phytonutrients that play a significant role in health promotion: flavonoids and the mixture of over fifty sulfur-containing compounds. The two flavonoid subgroups found in onions are the anthocyanins that impart a red/purple color to some varieties, and the flavanols such as quercetin and its derivatives that are responsible for the yellow flesh and brown skins of many varieties of onions. The flavonols are concentrated in the skin of most onions where they contribute to the color of the vegetable.

We now know that the health promoting compounds in onion, like those in garlic, are separated by cell walls. Slicing an onion ruptures these walls and releases the compounds which then combine to form a powerful new compound: thiopropanal sulfoxide. In addition to mitigating various diseases, this substance also gives cut onions their pungent aroma and their ability to make us cry.

To get the most health benefits from onions, let them sit for five to ten minutes after cutting and before cooking. Heat will deactivate the thiopropanal sulfoxide and you want to give it time to fully develop and concentrate before heating.
 
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What is a “Super Food”?

Well, the most important thing for everyone to know is that superfoods are easy to find in every local supermarket. They’re worth looking for!

These nutritional powerhouse foods are loaded with nutrients crucial to a healthy, long life.

If you can include a variety of them in your diet, everyday, we promise they will change your life!

These foods were chosen because they contain high concentrations of crucial nutrients, as well as the fact that many of them are low in calories. Foods containing these nutrients have been proven to help prevent and, in some cases, reverse the well-known effects of aging, including cardiovascular disease, Type II Diabetes, hypertension and certain cancers.

When you click on each superfood you’ll find information including a list of the primary nutrients that elevated them to superfood status.

This is not meant to be a complete list of every single nutrient that food contains, but rather, a list of the high-profile nutrients that have shown health benefits and that are present in that food in sufficient quantity to make a difference. Many of the superfoods have “Sidekicks”. These are foods that are generally in the same category as the flagship superfood and offer a similar nutrient profile.

So click around and find recipes and tips on how to incorporate these foods in your daily diet.

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