Top Things You Never Knew about This One Skinny Vegetable

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Zucchini! The super versatile veggie that you can eat raw, fried, or steamed. You can eat it in it’s entirely and has many health benefits. Did you know that you can eat the flowers from zucchini plants? It’s true. You might have even seen them for sale at your farmer’s market and wondered what they were. Lightly fried or baked with a tad of coconut oil, they are surprisingly delicious. You can even eat them raw in a salad.

One interesting thing about these little Italian squash is that you can eat the skin, something that cannot be said of too many other veggies. Like potatoes, you should NOT peel zucchini as this is where most of the antioxidants, fiber, and vitamin K are found. Peel this squash and you are throwing out most of the nutrients. By the way, although this is called a veggie and is sold with other vegies, it’s actually a fruit since it originates from a flower.

Take a look at the other health benefits you can get from the long, green, good eating veggies.

1. Naturally lower your blood pressure

Along with a good dose of magnesium, the potassium in zucchini helps to lower your blood pressure naturally. Uncontrolled hypertension can lead to heart attacks, stroke, and damage to blood vessels. Magnesium and potassium, something zucchini have lot of, can help to lower your blood pressure and relieve the overall stress on your circulatory system.

2. Prostate health

Several studies show that the phytonutrients in this veggie can help top the symptoms of benign prostatic hypertrophy. This is a condition where the prostate enlarges and this leads to complications for men with their sexual health and urination.

3. It can help you lose weight

If you want to ditch a few pounds, zucchini is a great low calorie snack. One full cup of sliced zucchini has only 20 calories. It’s 95 percent water, and is a great source of fiber, so it will fill you up but not fill you out.

4. Strong bones and heals wounds

Manganese helps the body develop strong, healthy bones and heal wounds and eating zucchini gets you a huge dose of this mineral every time you eat it.

5. Improves vision health

Zucchini has some important phytonutrients, such as zeaxanthin and lutein, which are known to help your eyes stay healthy. If you want to fight age related macular degeneration, then eating plenty of zucchini is the way to do just that.

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