The vending machine lurks in the staff room. The biscuit tin stares down from the kitchen shelf. The fridge is bulging with creamy cakes and pastries. If you suddenly got the munchies, it’s hard to resist these inviting temptations surrounding you. But what if you had a healthy alternative right there in your bag? Handy, convenient and healthy? What if you were toting a banana! Rich in nutrients, no fat, no salt, just full of nutritious goodness.
Without mercy, the 3 o’clock fuzzies hit almost every worker. Concentration levels dip and thoughts of putting the feet up at home come creeping in. The most likely cause of this lethargy is that your blood glucose levels begin to drop. To save the day, you need to eat a low-fat, carbohydrate charged food such as a banana. The carbs will immediately return your blood glucose levels to normal and you’ll get all the nutritional benefits of this amazing fruit.
Health agencies encourage us to eat two serves of fruit and five serves of veggies each day so we get our essential vitamins and minerals for good health. Bananas, as an example, are a great source of vitamin C, folate, riboflavin and are the best fruit source of vitamin B6. A medium banana provides over a quarter of your daily B6 needs.
The folate in bananas looks after about 5% of our daily needs from a small banana, 10% from a large one. So they’re ideal for women wanting healthy babies. Folate also appears to help avoid heart disease and dementia in later life.
Bananas are also renowned for their potassium content, a mineral that helps keep our blood pressure in check. Each banana has around 350mg of potassium or about 10% of your daily needs.
As a snack food, bananas are unbeatable. Think about it. They’re easy to peel and eat and they’re chock-full of nutrients. To choose a banana certainly isn’t fuzzy thinking.
Whilst bananas keep us on track nutritionally, they also offer other fantastic benefits. Like looking after our intestine health. The average banana contains around 3g of fibre, which is around 10 to 15% of the fibre recommended for good healthy bowels. Don’t believe the myth that bananas will constipate you.
The cold hard fact is that only one in four adults gets enough daily fibre to keep their insides healthy. Bananas are a simple way to boost your daily fibre intake. Sure beats eating spoonsful of bran!
Bananas leave the farm green and by the time they reach your greengrocer, they’re ripe and ready to eat. The carbohydrate in the banana converts from starch in the green stage to natural sugars as it ripens, so it becomes sweeter and softer. No wonder they’re popular with everyone.
