If there’s one fruit you should be eating first thing in the morning, it’s kiwi fruit. Aside from being sweet and tart at the same time, and incredibly good for you, we like that it’s available year-round in most grocery stores. As Slism reports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Guide Pyramid, a kiwi counts as a 1/2 cup, or one serving, of the fruit you need per day. This fuzzy brown fruit with the exotic green interior also provides just as much vitamin C as an orange. Vitamin C acts as an antioxidant, scavenging free radicals in your body to help prevent disease. By eating 1 kiwi in the morning you get your daily allowance of vitamin C, not to mention what it does to help with your skin: the citric acid found in kiwis is said to help you recover from fatigue making proteins more digestible with more Actinidine in your diet.
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“Kiwis are a nutrient dense food, meaning they are high in nutrients and low in calories,” said Megan Ware a registered dietitian and contributor to Medical News Today. “The possible health benefits of consuming kiwis include maintaining healthy skin tone and texture, reducing blood pressure and preventing heart disease and stroke.”
And though the outer skin is fuzzy, it can be eaten; it’s packed with vitamins and minerals as well. The kiwi is also rich in copper and potassium and contains more fiber per ounce than a banana. It’s such a good digestion aid that a study found that eating two kiwis a day for one month lessened constipation in people with irritable bowel syndrome.
Kiwi fruit also contain 89 percent of the RDA in Vitamin K, which helps against blood clotting and with the absorption of vitamin D for stronger bones. A kiwi also offers vitamin E to strengthen skin and hair and plenty of folate for pregnant and breastfeeding women. If you are looking to lose weight, use kiwi to replace half of your morning cereal to save calories. Kiwi contains only 50 calories in each half-cup serving. For instance, you can add it to low fat yogurt or cottage cheese for a high-protein, low-calorie snack. Toss it into smoothies, with mint leaves, strawberries and yogurt, almond milk or rice milk. The bold looking kiwi can also serve as the leading lady of you fresh-fruit salad vitamin-loaded breakfast. If parfait is your thing, try layering kiwi, lemon, yogurt and granola. Making waffles or pancakes this weekend? Dice some kiwi with Greek yogurt for a sweet and tarty topping that will wow them.
