When you are trying to eat a healthier diet that is full of more fruits and vegetables, you may consider how pumpkin could help you. This does not mean that you should be eating a pumpkin pie in hopes that this helps your diet. This is referring to eating pumpkin...not in pie form. So, is pumpkin something to add into your diet?
Pumpkin Calories
One of the biggest perks of a pumpkin is that this is considered a super low calorie vegetable. Only 100 grams of pumpkin is 26 calories. With this type of calorie intake, you will find that pumpkin dishes may be the way to go in order to keep your calorie intake low!
Health Benefits of Pumpkin
For those who are wanting to add more pumpkin to their diets, they will find that there are several benefits to doing this. These benefits including:
- Pumpkins have a ton of vitamins and minerals in them. They are considered to be rich in Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Vitamin E. It is also a rich source of calcium and copper!
- Eating more pumpkin has been shown to help with reducing blood pressure and lowering your risk of having heart related complications.
- Those who eat more pumpkin often find that they do not suffer with vision loss as much as someone who does not eat pumpkin thanks to the source of vitamins in these vegetables.
- Great for helping those with diabetes to control spikes or drops in their blood sugar.
- Pumpkin can help to increase weight loss.
- It also helps with boosting your immune system, which is always a plus especially during flu and cold season.
Ways to Add Pumpkin into Your Diet
So, how can you make sure that you are getting the health benefits of pumpkin and adding this into your diet? It can be tempting to eat a piece of pumpkin pie each day, but the sugars are going to combat the health benefits of this pumpkin. Instead, consider these ideas:
- Adding boiled pumpkin into your salads, much like you would squash
- Substituting any recipe that uses squash with pumpkin, since these are in the same family
- Eating baked pumpkin seeds, which can give you a lot of the vitamins and minerals
- Add pumpkin into your oatmeal for a unique flavor
- Make some pumpkin soup, which is perfect for a cool day
- Make a morning pumpkin smoothie
You will find that adding pumpkin into your diet is pretty simple. And you will want to do this with all the health benefits that pumpkin offers!
Photo by Briana Tozour on Unsplash
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