There’s no limit to perfection, and even if you’re not chasing a perfect healthy diet, it’s never bad to make your meals a bit more nutritious. There is one tip that will make sure you’re getting all out of your meals. You need a lot of antioxidants and micronutrients to help you keep being active and positive throughout the day.
The advice is that you try learning more about synergy. It’s a process of combining to things that will have a greater effect on your health as a combination, not as two separate objects (food, in our case). It’s like uniting an unorganized but incredibly bright and talented student with a not that quick but highly organized one.
There are some combos that will get some extra nutrition for you.
Cooked Tomatoes and Carrots
Most fruit and vegetables are the best when they’re raw, but this isn’t the truth for carrots and tomatoes. When you cook them, carrots get richer with beta carotene, while tomatoes enrich themselves with lycopene. It’s better if you steam them instead of boiling or frying, though.
Black Pepper and Turmeric
When it comes to spices, they are an amazing source of antioxidants that can enrich your food with one pinch. But turmeric and black pepper are a super-combo of spices, because the latter improves curcumin absorption by your body. Curcumin is the main and most powerful antioxidant in turmeric, but our body doesn’t absorb it easily.
Vitamin C Sources and Spinach
Spinach is valued for its vital iron content, the plant-based type that isn’t absorbed by our body very well. However, if you eat spinach along with a source of vitamin C, you will improve the amount of iron that your body with actually derive from the meal. It’s the opposite of the effect calcium does, as it reduces the organism’s ability to derive iron if taken in one meal of 30 minutes apart.
Green Tea and Citrus
We all know that green tea is a great source of antioxidants called catechins. They are very powerful and can help prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s, and much more diseases, especially those connected to aging and free radicals. These antioxidants are absorbed up to 98% better if you drink green tea with a citrus fruit of your choice. Maybe that’s why so many people like tea with lemon!
These combos show us that although we may eat healthy food, it’s not always the truth that we get the most out of it. Some small additions can help us improve our diet greatly, prevent diseases, and slow down aging processes.