When the weather warms up, we’re all drawn to various fruits during the warmer weather. You’re likely increasing the amount of water you’re drinking throughout the day, and with that, you may also be looking for different fruits and foods to help you embrace the season. One such food is a lemon. Lemons can and have been used in recipes for hundreds of years at this point, and lemonade is a popular summer drink that is perfect for quenching your thirst during the warm weather.
Lemons are ripe with health benefits, making them an excellent addition to a dessert, salad, your iced water, and even a glass of iced tea. Many health benefits of lemons will help you to continue living your best and healthiest life.
Health Benefits of Lemons
- Lemons are heart-healthy. While many people think of oranges as one of the best sources of vitamin C, they may be surprised to learn that lemons have 51% of your daily intake in one lemon. Vitamin C is not only beneficial to your immune system, though we all grab for it when we are feeling a bit under the weather, it also is good for your heart. Lemons could potentially lower some risk factors for heart disease, as well as reduce cholesterol levels, which makes this a must-have for anyone who wants to stay cardiac healthy.
- They are a good weight loss tool. You may have seen lemons touted as weight loss, and this is because they are. They have fiber, which helps you to feel full for longer after eating. This will help you to eat less throughout the day, but to get this fiber, you need more than the lemon juice, you’ll need to eat the whole lemon. There’s also a study showing that plant compounds in lemon extracts may help with weight loss(1).
- Ever had a kidney stone? These painful deposits can cause excruciating pain when passing, and lemons are a great way to help prevent them. The citric acid helps increase urine volume and urine pH, creating a less favorable environment for kidney stone formation. You’ll need about ½ a cup of juice daily to help with this. Unfortunately, any studies on lemonade working to help reduce kidney stones are inconclusive.
- Protect yourself against anemia. You know that dark leafy greens are the best place to get your iron, but did you know that lemons can help your body to absorb the iron better? Iron from plant sources, such as when you follow a raw foods diet, is harder for your body to absorb. This is why it’s so important to give your body any help you can give, like with lemons.
- Reduce your cancer risk with lemons. There are inconclusive studies that lemons may help lower the risk for cancer, even having anticancer effects, but none of this has been proven yet, it is just a hypothesis at this point. However, given how horrible of a disease cancer is, even just the possibility of lemons helping to fight cancer makes it well worth adding this into your diet. This goes for most citrus fruits, in fact, so make sure you add that to your diet daily.
Ultimately, the main thing to take away from this is to add lemons to your diet. There are so many health benefits that can’t be ignored, and they can so easily be added to a variety of different recipes. Lemonade is a great summer drink, lemons make a great addition to a variety of salads and dishes, and they also are wonderful to add to some plant-based desserts like a plant-based lemon mousse or a plant-based lemon pudding. This is a tangy twist to your meals.
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