Tuesday, December 21, 2010

bananavocadorange

Lunch for me is the same every day. It's built around a banana, an avocado, and an orange, and may occupy an hour or two of each early afternoon.

More and more, I regard food as medicine which doesn't have to be unpleasant, or a chore to take, and fruit as the most natural food for humans, considering the state to which our digestive systems have evolved. It's mostly what our recent ancestors who lived in the trees lived on.

Oranges, bananas, and avocados are all teeming with essential nutrients. The 70 milligrams of vitamin C in a medium-size orange is its outstanding attribute, and it contains 237 mg of potassium as well. Bananas have even more potassium, 422 mg, but the mighty avocado seems to be the king of fruits, containing 975 mg of potassium and significant amounts of niacin, pantothenic acid, vitamin A, and B vitamins in addition to four grams of protein.

I usually start with the orange, and even though I'm supposed to avoid dairy, I can't resist having a few slices of cheese with it. The wonderful taste of the combination is simply too good to pass up. Then comes the banana, al fresco.

It took me a long time to warm up to avocados, and I still don't like eating them by themselves. So I mash my daily avocado up in a bowl, mix it with a squirt of lemon juice and black pepper, and scoop it up with low-fat and very inoffensive tortilla chips from Trader Joe's.

I'd recommend this lunch to anybody except people who may be allergic to one or more of the three. It's filling, but also provides a good way for a person to maintain or lose weight, especially if you skip the cheese.

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