Should You Give Up Bananas?

If there’s nothing to snack on, especially when you’re in a hurry, the best solution would be a banana (or maybe two)! Inexpensive, digestible, portable, and delicious. This is one fruit that you can munch post-workouts or blend into a smoothie or add to your breakfast cereals, and you’re good to go.

Bananas are replete with vital nutrients like magnesium, potassium, and Vitamin C, besides a few more. No matter how good all these sounds, if you believe that tasty fruits should not even be an inch closer to what you consider a low-carb diet, then there can be some health changes. Read on if you wish to know what side effects you’re inviting by ‘giving up bananas’ from your daily diet.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Losing weight is of paramount importance to you, so you decided to chuck off bananas. Sadly, it can have a contrasting effect on your health. Going by a study published in 2017 in the Journal of Functional Foods, when you consume the resistant starch present in unripe banana flour just before meals, there’s no less than a 14% deficit in the successive caloric intake.

Susceptibility Towards Flu

We have often seen many people prone to becoming ill every year, owing to flu. That’s nothing out of the odds, for they decide to keep bananas out of their daily menu. Banana lectin (a specialized sugar-binding fiber that cannot be digested), which is engineered, contains antibacterial properties to help combat multiple influenza strains. This finding came to the fore after a 2020 review of research was published in PNAS.

Increase Immunity.

Instead of ripe, if you choose the unripe bananas, you will benefit from the resistant starch content. The fruit is found to be a great source of the same, and it’s also shown some prebiotic effects. In other words, healthy bacteria is fed inside the digestive tract simply because of the starch. Now, if you keep bananas away from the daily diet, you are depriving the advantage.

Ringing gut bacteria of the food that should increase in your body. In Frontiers in Immunology, a research article published in 2013 explained how probiotic fiber’s insufficient quality could render support to the immune system. Now, if you do not include prebiotic foods like bananas, your immune health will slow down, and as a result, you will be more prone to illnesses.

Quick Recovery From Work Out

While turning to protein bars or high-end sports drinks might be the trend that you stick to after workouts to keep yourself fueled up, it’s time you try bananas instead. Having a medium-sized banana would provide you an approx. Five hundred seventeen milligrams of potassium or 115 of RDA, the deficiency of which causes muscle cramps. So if you are toying with the idea of giving up bananas, drop the idea.

Causes High Blood Pressure.

Keeping your blood sugar and blood pressure within permissible limits should be your lookouts as you age. In that case, have the much-required potassium-rich bananas on your menu. In Hypertension, one of the journals whereby a study came to the fore in 2005, it was found that foods like a banana that has high potassium content can lower down blood pressure. Exactly as potassium chloride is useful in keeping blood pressure levels under check, bananas also work on the same principle.

Increases Risk of Stroke.

Linked to the former, high blood pressure and chances of strokes go hand in hand. So if you don’t wish to intensify the risks further, consume fresh bananas or make a serving of porridge, oats, or cereal and add bananas or, better still, banana shake. All of these are tasty alternatives to the dull and drab fruit itself.

A 2013 review of meta-analyses published in BMJ journal revealed that those who had greater intakes of potassium reduces the perils of stroke by no less than 24%! So why would you want to ditch bananas from your meal plan and take the unnecessary stress at all? Besides, it’s not worth it.

Even if you include generous doses of fruits in your daily diet, make sure you keep bananas with them. Bananas would offer you a wholesome, energetic effect upon consumption. So, make sure to include them in your everyday diet. However, make sure to consume it in moderation!