| When
you eat citrus fruit, don’t throw away the peel—it
could be the best part. Several studies show that the
peel may have hidden health benefits—a class of
compounds, polymethoxylated flavones (PMFs) that could
help lower your cholesterol—as much as some cholesterol-lowering
medications, but without the side effects.
U.S.
and Canadian researchers found that a diet that includes
just one percent of these PMFs helped lower total cholesterol
by nearly 30 percent and lowered LDL (bad) cholesterol
by nearly 40 percent. The PMFs did not appear to affect
HDL (good) cholesterol levels.
It’s
not clear yet how these PMFs lower cholesterol; researchers
speculate they may work like statin drugs, which inhibit
the breakdown of cholesterol and triglycerides in the
liver.
PMFs
are found in a variety of citrus fruits, but the most
common kinds, tangeretin and nobiletin, are found in
the peels of tangerines and oranges. (Citrus juice also
contains PMFs, but in much smaller amounts—in
fact, you’d have to drink about 20 glasses of
juice a day to get the amount of PMFs comparable to
those used in the study.)
So
how do you get some citrus skin into your diet? Use
a tablespoon of grated, well-scrubbed orange or tangerine
skin (zest) in baking, in tea, on salads, in salad dressing,
mixed into yogurt, in soup, or even sprinkled on oatmeal
or other hot cereal. |