Pumpkin - Power Food for Dieters

Pumpkins are sweet, creamy and delicious. But pumpkins are more than just a Thanksgiving treat, they are power food for dieters. This great tasting food is not only low-fat and low-calorie - it provides a powerful punch of nutrition to keep diseases away, and can even help you with your diet. Read on to find out why.

Pumpkins are packed with fiber that are great for elimination of body wastes. Eat pumpkins to fight bloating and keep a regular toilet schedule. Aside from this, you will get a unique combination of phytonutrients that combat cancer.

You might be interested to know that the squash or pumpkin is not really a vegetable. This nutritional superstar is actually a fruit. It’s a gourd like melons that is cheap and available all year round. Canned pumpkin is actually a very good substitute when it’s not available fresh. Just make sure it’s not pumpkin pie filling okay?

So why exactly is pumpkin a nutritional power food? It is jampacked with fiber, pantothenic acid, magnesium, vitamins C and E. What is especially good unique about pumpkin is what nutrition experts call a “synergistic combination or carotenoids”. That just means pumpkin contains a good combination carotenoids - beta-carotene and alpha carotene. Just a half cup serving of pumpkin gives us two-times the daily recommended dietary intake of disease fighting alpha and beta carotenes!

Eating pumpkins - the power food for dieters can help you fight cancer - particularly lung, colon, bladder, cervix and skin cancers. The UK’s landmark Nurses’ Health Study shows that women who included enough carotenes in their diets had the lowest incidence of breast cancer.

Carotenoids also combat heart disease. In a long term study spanning more than 10 years, researchers saw a link between low carotenoid levels in the blood and higher incidence of heart disease. Those with less risk for heart disease showed higher concentrations of carotenoids. However, both beta and alpha carotenes had to be combined. The exact combination you will get from eating pumpkins.

If you are trying to keep trim and look young, pumpkins also have benefits you will be interested in. The fiber will not only help prevent colon cancer, it will keep your bowel movements regular. Bonus: less bloating! Just a cup of creamy good pumpkin will give you a whopping 5 grams of fiber. Much better than your typical breakfast cereal. The unique concentration of alpha and beta carotenes have significant anti-aging properties. Taking beta carotene alone is not enough to help fight wrinkles. You need to have the alpha and beta combination.

Pumpkin is best served baked - no need to add sugar or other diet-busting additives. Pumpkin is so sweet and good enough on it’s own you can eat it straight from the hull after baking or mash it up with a little low fat milk and a tad salt and pepper for a great side dish. Who wouldn’t want some sweet pumpkin pudding?

So eat your serving of pumpkin everyday to stay young, fight cancer - and help you keep slim. It’s a yummy way to get some much needed fiber into your diet!

Lose Weight and Boost Energy with Super Food Oranges

Oranges taste great, but they are even greater for your health and for weight loss. To stay trim and fit, we should all be eating more vegetables and fruits - especially orange fruits. The Copenhagen University Hospital conducted a study that proves how women trim down their waist size by inches by simply eating oranges in place of refined carbohydrates like bread or pasta.

Most of us know how oranges are rich in fiber. The fiber is a wonderful aid to digestion and speeds up internal cleansing for our bodies. But fiber is not the only thing in oranges that can help us lose weight. Studies show that oranges have enough vitamin C and beta carotene that also zaps away belly fat. Yes, super oranges fight fat!

If you are feeling sluggish mid day and start to crave a cup of coffee, pick up an orange instead. Nutritionists explain, orange juice actually has more energy boosters than a cup of coffee. This makes oranges a great pre and post workout food as well.

Each orange is a mere 60 calories, yet it is loaded with nutrients, and disease-fighting phytochemicals that are so good for you

Super oranges contain very high amounts of vitamins A, B and C. There is something in oranges that will also help you absorb much more calcium, magnesium and other minerals important mineral.

The hydrochloric acid that comes from eating oranges is very effective in detoxifying the body as well. This is why a growing trend right now is the orange detox diet.

But eating oranges need not be done just for a special detox diet. We should all be eating oranges everyday as part of a balanced, healthy diet - with plenty of fruits and vegetables as well as limited fat, sugar and refined carbohydrates.

The oranges are not just good for our health. Oranges can help us in our weight loss goals! But, nutrition experts advice: it is best to eat the orange in fruit form. Eating the fruit as opposed to just the juice will give you more of the soluble fiber that sweeps up the fat in our bloodstream.

The juice should not be ignored though. A Harvard study showed an interesting trend: Among nurses they surveyed (about 87,000 of them) those who drank freshly orange juice daily had a 25% lower chance of getting a stroke.

Experts are convinced oranges reduce the risk of cancer - particularly cancer of the stomach, mouth, esophagus and larynx by a whopping 50%. Oranges reduce cholesterol, therefore preventing heart disease. Not only that, oranges promote the production of collagen. This means younger, smoother skin.

Aside from the wrinkles, super food oranges can keep asthma and arthritis away. Now if your priority is to lose weight, there’s more good news: Oranges help prevent diabetes and obesity.

Indulge in this sweet, yummy snack without feeling guilty. Indulge and make yourself healthier, thinner and more energized.

Eat Oats, Lose Weight!

If you want to lose weight, cutting down food is the usual recourse. However, with certain foods eating more can actually help you lose weight. Eating oats for weight loss is one prime example. Consider oat meal and oat bran as weight loss super foods.

Oats are not only packed with vitamins and minerals, they are so rich in soluble and insoluble fibers that can lower your cholesterol and sugar levels. This is medically proven! Beta glucan is a soluble fiber contained in oats. When this soluble fiber goes through your digestive tract it absorbs cholesterol containing acids. Instead of your body accumulating all the cholesterol, the beta glucan quite literally sweeps it out of your system. It throws the cholesterol down the toilet.

A major study has proven: eating oats regularly can lover LDL or bad cholesterol by about 25 percent. Not only that, the same fibers found in oats can also lower your blood sugar levels. Fiber can do this by letting your body slow down its absorption of carbohydrates. If carbohydrates stay long enough in our system it is converted to sugar - the reason why many of us are overweight.

The regular bathroom trips that come from eating oats also helps stave off bloating. You go to the bathroom regularly - your system is clean, your metabolism keeps working.

Oats are such high-density foods that eating a cup can have you feeling full longer. Less cravings for fattier, less healthy fare.

Take note: Research shows children who eat oats daily are 50 percent less likely to be obese. So go ahead and indulge in healthy oats regularly if you want to lose weight.