Avocado: A Surprisingly Complete Food

Avocados are a surprisingly complete food, with fourteen minerals to stimulate growth, including iron and copper for your blood. The sodium and potassium in avocados keeps your body chemically balanced, and their low sugar content and absence of starch make them an ideal fruit for diabetics or hypoglycemics (choose small slices throughout the day to keep your sugar balanced).

Vitamins in avocados include A, several B-complex, C, and E, as well as phosphorus and magnesium. They’re also a great source of antioxidants like vitamins E and C.

Because of their density, avocados, like bananas, are filling. But they are also a perfectly digestible slow-burning fuel, making them ideal for replenishing nutrients for athletes. They’re a great source of fruit oil and digestible fats, and they make excellent and healthy dips for raw vegetables. When blended with fruit, they make particularly nutritious baby food.

Avocados are also called alligator pears because of their shape and the color of their skin. The four hundred varieties of avocado are found throughout Mexico and South America. After planting an avocado tree, you’ll have to wait two to three years for it to bear fruit, but it’s worth the wait.

Picking and Preparing Avocadoes

A perfect avocado is hard to choose in the store; because they go so quickly through ripeness into over ripeness, you’re better off picking slightly unripe ones and letting them ripen on the counter with your bananas. Ideal avocados to purchase are dark green and hard, and they brown slightly and become slightly soft to thumb pressure as they ripen. Remove the flesh by cutting the fruit in half lengthwise. If you twist it open from here, the large pit easily comes out of one side, and all you have to do is twist it out of the other side with a knife.

Replace butter with avocado spread, or use avocado dip and raw vegetables to replace your chips and ranch dressing.

from Healthy Recipes