Fuel Your Body
Pumpkin
By Joanna Gertler
(published November 24, 2010)
So while Thanksgiving and Halloween may be over, there are plenty of reasons to keep pumpkins in your grocery cart throughout the remaining Fall and Winter seasons.
Pumpkin is a really terrific choice to make for cooking and eating. It’s loaded with good things – including water – has very few calories, and delivers a healthy dose of fibre. It’s a particularly good source of beta carotene/vitamin A. Beta carotene (which converts to vitamin A) is a powerful antioxidant as well as an anti-inflammatory agent. It helps prevent build up of cholesterol on the arterial walls, thus reducing chances of strokes.
Pumpkin meat is high in carotenoids, which gives the pumpkin its orange colour. Carotenoids are renowned for fighting free radicals, which can leave cells vulnerable to damage. In addition, pumpkins are high in lutein and zeaxanthin which scavenge free radicals in the lens of the eye. This means they can help prevent the formation of cataracts and reduce the risk of macular degeneration, a serious eye problem leading to blindness. But that’s not all!
Pumpkins are also good for other common nutrients, like iron, zinc, vitamin C and potassium. Apart from the flesh, pumpkin seeds also boast a huge number of nutrition benefits – but that can be a whole other article.
How do you get more pumpkin into your diet? Let me count the ways … I recently got three different recipes from one, normal sized pumpkin. I began by roasting it in the oven and after it was cooked, scraped out the flesh. It provided me with enough to make the following:
1) pumpkin and kale
risotto
2) pumpkin and crystallised ginger
muffins
3) I still had enough pumpkin left for
soup – this is an amazing soup, so maybe I was just keeping the best for last.
If the thought of having to roast a pumpkin and deal with the mess of the seeds and slime around them, rest assured: you can use canned pumpkin. It’s one of the only canned foods that has no salt or sugar added! Add canned pumpkin to your oatmeal and sprinkle with pumpkin pie spices and roasted sunflower seeds for a great way to begin your day.
Happy carving!