Bananas, A Great Snack?

The very popular diet plan I tried prohibited eating bananas, at least initially. I believed it to be because of the sugar content. Now I read that bananas are a great snack and are referred to as a wonder food. I want to sort through this confusion because I really like bananas but continue to avoid them.

Word association with bananas might bring to mind zoo animals peeling and eating bananas or someone slipping on a banana peel. Bananas in the later case are given a bum rap because you can slip on an orange peel or many other fruits. It's just that banana peels are a bigger target and super slippery.

History shows that bananas date back to 2000 BC in the area of South-East Asia. Wild banana plants had seeds and were not edible. The eventual crossing of two wild species led to the fruit we know today. Records indicate that the banana was a favored fruit down through time and now is grown in over 100 countries.

The banana is rated as one of the healthiest of fruits. One source indicated that bananas are naturally radioactive. That caught my attention. The high potassium content relates to very small amounts of a radio-isotope that occurs naturally in potassium. The value and effect of this radioactivity is negligible.

Bananas are high in resistant starch. This is a type of starch that body enzymes can't break down and is not digested in the small intestine. Entering the large intestine it becomes more like fiber. The unripe fruit has about three times the resistant starch as the ripe. Two of the benefits of resistant starch are it makes you feel full or satisfied and it is associated with lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

The weight of the fruit is about 100 to 150 grams. Using 100 grams as the scale, a banana contains 89 calories, just over 12 grams of sugars, 23 grams of carbohydrates and a little less than 3 grams of dietary fiber. It is vitamin rich, having multiple B vitamins and vitamin C. The potassium content is 358 mg. Also, bananas are 75% water.

There are many benefits attributed to the banana. The more significant benefits include:

• Blood Pressure: Because of the high level of potassium and very low sodium eating bananas may help lower blood pressure. In fact, the United States Food and Drug Administration has recently permitted making claims for bananas ability to lower the risk of high blood pressure and stroke.
• Depression: recent studies have shown that people suffering from depression felt much better after eating a banana. The tryptophan content is converted to serotonin, which is known to make a person relax.
• Heartburn: bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body.
• Mental Alertness: studies have shown that students eating fruit with high levels of potassium help the learning process by making them more alert.
• Stress: the high potassium level of bananas helps normalize the heart rate, send oxygen to the brain and balance the electrolytes. The metabolic rate increases under stress and the potassium levels drop. A banana can help normalize the imbalance.

So it looks like there is a lot more to a banana than I knew. And the lowly banana peel has residual value. Some say that rubbing a mosquito bite with the inside of a banana peel reduces the itch and pain. Also, it is said that placing a piece of peel on a wart and wrapping it with tape will kill the wart.

Okay, bananas are back on my snack list for better health.

To read more about healthy snacks and dieting visit my website page Eating Snack Food. Thank you for your interest in healthy snack food.

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