The Skinny Kid

SaukValley.com - Serving Dixon, Sterling & Rock Falls

It’s a pretty good bet that if you ate three pomegranates a day, you’d lose weight and live longer.For one thing, given how finicky and labor-intensive it is to eat a pomegranate, you wouldn’t have much time left to eat other foods.

Then there’s the growing body of research suggesting that the polyphenolic antioxidants found in pomegranates (and in red grapes, blueberries, cranberries) have beneficial health effects that include improving cardiac health and reducing the risk of cancer.

I’ve talked about some of those benefits before, and frequently drink pomegranate juice myself. But the article points out that the juice may not offer the same benefits in terms of weight control.

Check the nutrition labels, and you’ll see why. These are sugar bombs of the first order.

An 8-ounce serving of Pom? Thirty-four grams of sugar. Whole Foods’ 365 Everyday Value: 40 grams. Frutzzo: 32 grams.

By comparison, an 8-ounce serving of Coca-Cola contains 27 grams of sugar; 8 ounces of Mountain Dew, 31 grams.

More sugar than soda? Wow. I guess all that sugar is in the fruit as well, but as the article points out it is a little harder to get at. Another one of those cases where slowing down the pace of eating can have benefits of its own.

ScienceDaily: Pomegranate Juice May Help Fight Lung Cancer

Researchers are adding to the list of cancer types for which pomegranates seem to halt growth. A recent study at the University of Wisconsin–Madison using a mouse model shows that consuming pomegranates could potentially help reduce the growth and spread of lung cancer cells or even prevent lung cancer from developing.

The list is already pretty long.

Pomegranate Helps Diabetic Hearts

A preliminary new study shows that people with diabetes who drank pomegranate juice for three months had a lower risk of atherosclerosis — or hardening of the arteries. In addition, the pomegranate juice appeared to slow the absorption of unhealthy LDL cholesterol by immune cells.People with diabetes have increased risk for atherosclerosis, which contributes to coronary heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, and other circulation problems.

These results suggest that the antioxidants found in pomegranate juice may be especially beneficial in reducing these heart-related risks associated with diabetes.

Yet another in a long stream of positive pomegranate news.