Cath’s Super food for energy: lemons
By Catherine Saxelby
Wake up your taste buds with the tartness of lemons, a natural energy recharger for busy people who want to watch their weight, says nutritionist Catherine Saxelby.
Lemon help for weight loss
Now for the good news. Lemons are very low in kilojoules – so low you don’t need to bother counting them. An average sized lemon has less than 80 kilojoules (20 calories), one of the key reasons they tend to appear in so many diet books.
For years, dieters have been told to start the day with a glass of water with the juice of a freshly squeezed lemon to ‘cleanse’ the insides and quell early-morning hunger pangs.
Lemon’s acidity is a key factor. It seems it can slows the rate of stomach emptying so a generous squeeze of lemon juice on your meal can effectively lower it’s glycaemic index (GI) to keep your blood glucose under control and your hunger pangs at bay.
Lemons and detoxing
A new detox plan called the Lemon Detox attempts to ride on the tail of lemon’s healthy benefits. Unfortunately once you read it, you’ll see that it’s not really based on lemon but instead Madal Bal tree syrup, a high sugar product derived from palm and maple trees. When detoxing, you mix this sugary syrup with lemons and water to make a sweet lemonade style drink which you consume along with herbal teas and water for 10 days. I don’t recommend it as it’s a fast and teaches you nothing about retraining your eating habits.
Lemon nutrition
There’s a lot to love about lemons. Like all citrus fruit, lemons are packed with vitamin C. One average-sized lemon will give you 40mg or 90 per cent of your daily needs. You also get a little folate and good amounts of the mineral potassium, an essential mineral that counteracts the damage done by excess salt to the kidneys and heart. In addition, the distinctive tart flavour keeps your taste buds satisfied when you cut back on salt.
Note that there’s little protein or fat and barely a gram of carbohydrate, primarily sugar.
Don’t overlook the rind of the lemon - both the rind and juice contain the flavonoid limonene. This is an antioxidant that’s showing promise as an anti-cancer agent but at this stage there’s still a way to go. And there’s US research showing that the rind has the potential to lower cholesterol – similar findings from grapefruit and orange also have been reported. Whether this ends up being proven, it’s still another good reason to add grated lemon rind to muffins, grilled fish, steamed green beans and chicken dishes.
Ways to use lemons
- Use lemon juice liberally wherever you can – to extract the most juice, have them at room temperature and roll them around on the bench first to break up their juicy membranes.
- Squeeze it on fish, oysters, prawns and any seafood
- Substitute it for vinegar for a tangy salad dressing
- Mix the juice of one lemon with a tablespoon of honey for a sore throat
- Use a whole lemon as a stuffing for roasted chicken – simply prick the skin and then insert a whole lemon along with a few springs of fresh rosemary or parsley to fill the cavity before roasting.
- Add slices to your pan when steaming vegetables to lift flavours
- Combine lemon slices with dill or basil to bring out the flavour of fish
- Enjoy in tea instead of milk
Catherine Saxelby is an accredited nutritionist and author of 9 books including Nutrition for Life. For more tips and ideas, go to her website at www.foodwatch.com.au