5 Reasons Watermelons Are the Best Summer Food
3. Lowers blood pressure
An amino acid you may not have heard of, L-citrulline, helps keep blood vessels healthy. And watermelon can be the best food source.
In 2021, researchers compared previous studies on how watermelons and citrulline affect cardio-metabolic health. Eight papers looked at blood pressure. Seven of them found that eating watermelon flesh, juice or watermelon juice helped to lower it.
Citrulline is “really good for your arteries,” Cassetty says. And any time you have flexible blood vessels that can expand and allow blood to flow and not become hardened or damaged, that’s what you really want.
Just like your skin and eyes, more than one nutrient is involved here. Lycopene appears again – it helps control high blood pressure, too. Additionally, watermelon provides potassium, which can moderate the BP-raising effects of too much sodium.
4. Improves your diet
There’s a reason it’s called a watermelon – the fruit is 92 percent water. Because of all that H2O, a two-cup serving contains only 90 calories. But it still provides you with delicious portions of many nutrients. And research suggests that adding watermelon to your diet helps you eat better overall.
A 2022 study published in the journal Nutrients found that people who drank watermelon ate a healthier diet than those who did not. They ate less unhealthy fat and added sugar, along with more nutrients like fiber, magnesium, potassium, and vitamins A and C; and many antioxidants such as lycopene and beta-carotene.
Another study looked at how watermelon can help you eat less overall. In it, a group of overweight or obese people enjoyed two cups of watermelon every day for four weeks. After the break, they ate the same caloric cookie every day for another four weeks. Although the two snacks had the same number of calories, the participants’ weight went up after a month of eating the cake, and down after the watermelon . Participants said they felt full for up to two hours after eating the watermelon, but only 20 minutes after the cookie.
This is probably due to the combination of fiber and water in watermelons, according to McKay. First, fiber helps slow down the absorption of sugar in your body. “At the same time, the fiber combined with the water in the watermelon can help you pack on that weight in your stomach and make you feel fuller for longer, thus reducing your appetite,” he says. .”
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