Nutrition Fact For The Week: Strawberries

Still good for you! Strawberry, yogurt cone! Delicious

This week we are going to do something a little different. Once you picked up your box and opened it what was the first thing that your eyes fell on. The strawberries. Beautifully red and delicious the strawberries are a great add to this week's veggie box. Instead of doing another nutrition fact on a vegetable perhaps unknown to you let's look at strawberries.

What can we say about them. They have a beautiful shape, color and delicious taste. They make great sauces, yummy ice cream, delicious pies and are perfectly good by themselves. To style up a dish, strawberries go great in salads and are delectable in a fruit salad. You just can't go wrong with this sweet fruit.

Perhaps you have also noticed that you bought a batch of strawberries on Monday and now it is Thursday and they are already going bad! Strawberries are very perishable and in a recent study showed that in two days time they can lose much of their vitamin C and antioxidants. This might not be a problem in the summer time when they are in abundance and come pretty cheap but when buying strawberries you have to eat them fast! Of course strawberries don't go bad in two days you can still eat them depending on how fresh you bought them after a week, but when they are being stored depending on the humidity they can decrease in nutrient value.

For a long time this ruby red fruit has been studied as blood sugar regulator. But recently there has been a connection made scientists in relation to strawberries, blood sugar levels and and table sugar. We all know that too much sugar in your diet is bad. It leads to spikes in blood sugar levels and when eating too much of it over a long period of time can lead to type 2 diabetes and other unwanted problems. What is interesting about the strawberry is that blood sugar spikes are reduced as you eat them! One cup can reduce those levels and it really isn't hard to eat a cup of this sweet fruit.

With the combination of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrients, strawberries help with cardiovascular support and prevent cardiovascular diseases. They improved regulation of blood sugar, decreased the risk of type 2 diabetes and prevent certain types of cancer like breast, cervical, colon, and esophageal cancer. Wow. And you thought they only tasted good.