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Guavas are an excellent source of vitamin C. and are high in pectin and other types of soluble dietary fibre. Additionally guavas provide potassium and beta-carotene.

Guavas small tropical fruits that first originated in southern Africa and South America. The fruit is round, pear shaped, or ovoid, has a thin skin and varies in colour from yellow green through to pale yellow.

It has a distinctive musky aroma with a sweet flavour. The entire fruit is edible when it is fully ripe, though many people discard the skins and seeds. Most varieties of guava have meaty deep pink flesh, though some varieties are yellow or white.

An average sized guava has approximately 4 times as much vitamin C. as an orange. When choosing guavas, choose a fruit that is firm but not hard, because a guava when it is ripe will be able to be squeezed a slightly.

Dried guavas may be a problem with people who suffer asthma or allergic reactions as they may be treated with sulphites.

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photo credit: Paul Francis Harrison

Mushrooms are a classified fungi, (which are primitive plants that cannot use photosynthesis to obtain energy because they do not contain chlorophyll). Instead they get their nutrients and energy from partially decomposed tissues of other vegetation.

Did you know that mushrooms have a unique feature? Their cell walls are made of chitin, which is the same material that makes up the external skeleton, (or exoskeleton), of insects, whereas plant cell walls are made of cellulose. Humans value cellulose as fibre, because we cannot digest it and it passes through the gut and helps with the elimination of digestive waste.

For 5000 years mushrooms have been used as medicines, stimulants, hallucinogens, and even as dried tinder for lighting stone age fires. The proof of this was found on the 5000 year old body of the Iceman named Oetzi found in the Alps towards the end of last century.

The French are credited with being the first cultivators of mushrooms over 300 years ago in abandoned Gypsum quarries near Paris. Today of course mushrooms are grown on beds of manure straw and soil, and there is a wide range of mushrooms that are offered for sale by many supermarkets.

Interestingly a mushroom which is not picked will double in size every 24 hours starting as a closed cup mushroom, and finishing as a large flat mushroom with open gills. A mushroom’s flavour is directly proportional to its age, so the older the mushroom the more flavour.

Mushrooms bruise easily and should never be stored in cling film or plastic. They should be stored in paper or cloth bags in the vegetable part of the refrigerator. Store them in anything else and they will deteriorate quickly. Unfortunately even then the maximum time you should store a mushrooms in a fridge is five days.

Warning!..

Mushrooms contain toxins and trace amounts of the carcinogen Agaritine. The toxins can be reduced by cooking, but if you are a cancer sufferer, or are susceptible to cancer perhaps you should avoid mushrooms.

Although mushrooms do have some benefits in that they are a useful source of copper and some of the B vitamins, wild mushrooms can be extremely dangerous. While they may be safe to eat by themselves, they can be deadly when eaten with alcohol.

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Deciding not to eat beef because you believe it affects your cholesterol level is not actually quite correct. Eating too much red meat will affect your cholesterol level, but eating red meat in moderation does you little harm, and in fact may be beneficial.

Beef contains a type of fatty acid called conjugated linoleic acid or CLA for short which has been shown to help improve cholesterol ratios. Note however I said in moderation.

Animal studies have also shown that the presence of CLA in animals can delay the onset of atherosclerosis and aid weight loss. However, further research still needs to be done to form a conclusive opinion with humans.


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