Plant onions, reap good health!

Grow your own onions for great health benefits!

One of the best ways to improve your health is through nutrition, and food is never more nutritious than when we grow it ourselves, and can eat it fresh from the garden. (Not to mention all the exercise you get while working in the garden!) It’s time to plant onions here, so we want to share some of the unique health benefits of this little bulb. Not only does it smell heavenly when sautéed, it’s also good for you.

Heart  

• help to prevent atherosclerosis

• May lower cholesterol

• Can help lower blood pressure

• Strengthen blood vessels

Lungs

• help prevent bronchitis

• alleviates bronchial constriction caused by allergies in asthmatic people

Digestive

• helps support growth of healthy bacteria

• Can reduce risk of colon tumors

• May lower risk of stomach cancer and esophageal cancer

Immunity

• help to prevent coughs and colds

• Appears to function in both antibacterial and antiviral ways

Other

• may be very effective to decrease bone loss common in menopausal women

• helps to decrease inflammation

• shown to decrease risk for many other types of cancer as well

Onions provide fiber, vitamin C, and chromium. Green onions are a good source of vitamin A. Onions also offer various antioxidants, including Quercitin (Quercitin is the most credited for cancer-prevention qualities and is more concentrated in outer layers of red and yellow onions than in any other food source).

Onions vary in their levels of protective substances. Stronger-tasting onions, such as New York Bold, Northern Red, and Western Yellow have higher levels of phenolics and flavenoids, making them much more active in promoting health. However, even Vidalia onions (my personal favorites, and ranking much lower in protective substances) can boast local stomach cancer death rates half of the national average.

You should remember that many of these beneficial flavenoids are concentrated in the outer layers, so don’t overpeel your onions. Another good tip: Quercitin is not "cooked out" when onions are slowly simmered in soup, but rather it is transferred into the liquid of the soup, so adding onions to any soup-type dish you prepare will help you to offer healthful benefits in every spoonful.

The only known medical issue is that because onions have some blood-thinning properties, they can increase the effect of anti-coagulants. And of course, eating very large quantities can lead to stomach upset. Most of the studies considered people who ate about ½ an onion per day and found they enjoyed full health benefits, while a few of these benefits are achieved by as little as 1-3 servings per week. As much as one onion per day was consumed to arrive at the benefits in a couple of the studies.