Bananas make for a very easy and delicious snack, especially pre or post-workout when you need all the energy you can get your hands on. A medium-sized banana has around 105 calories and is made up of mostly water, carbohydrates, a few proteins, and next to no fats. Let’s have a look at some of the benefits of eating bananas.
Top 5 Benefits of Eating Banana
Bananas and the digestive system
Each banana has around 3.1 g of fiber. A banana has 2 types of fibers: pectin and resistant starch. The quantity of the pectin fiber tends to decrease as the banana ripens and the resistant starch fiber is exclusively present in unripe banana. Due to the presence of these fibers, the average glycemic index (GI) of a banana is 51. This low GI means that eating a banana doesn’t make your blood sugar spike and the banana digests slowing making your stomach stay full for a long time.
Both the fibers also provide you with good gut bacteria that are essential for a stronger immune system and brain health. These also help prevent colon cancer. Moreover, bananas are considered as a natural laxative and can help in treating gastrointestinal troubles like constipation, stomach sores, and indigestion.
Bananas support weight loss
No study has directly linked eating a banana to losing weight but seen in hindsight, a banana has just over 100 calories, is filling and very nutritious and this could help you limit your appetite in a healthy way. Hence, making it possible for you to cut back on eating more calories or sugary, refined, and processed foods, which could easily make you go over your daily calorie intake.
Bananas are good for heart health
Bananas are excellent sources of dietary nutrients like potassium and magnesium, 9 % and 8% respectively of RDI (Reference daily intake). Having a good amount of potassium in your diet helps in lowering the blood pressure and prevents heart palpitations. Moreover, it reduces the risk of heart disease by a thumping 27%. Similarly, magnesium also helps in lowering the blood pressure by avoiding blood clots to form in the blood vessels; it also helps in maintaining a healthy heartbeat.
Bananas and working out
A banana is a good source of fuel for carrying out a strength workout, it is known that eating a banana or two before a workout could easily provide you energy for doing around an hour of workout. Moreover, bananas can also help in easing muscle cramps and soreness that is sure to set in for most of us after a workout session.
Eating unripe bananas may increase insulin sensitivity
Insulin resistance is a condition of the body when the cells don’t respond to the hormone insulin and as a consequence don’t absorb the glucose and use it as a fuel, letting the glucose to build up in the blood and cause the blood sugar level to rise and lead to diseases like prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. The good news is although still under research, a number of studies have found out that consuming about 15 to 30 grams of resistant starch found in the unripe bananas on a daily basis, can restore about 30 to 50% of the insulin sensitivity of your cells in a period of just 30 days.
Along with providing the body with nutritious benefits, a banana is an excellent way to satisfy that sweet tooth.
Benefits of Eating Banana | Infographic
