― Banish the post-meal slump with kiwifruit

Ongoing research indicates that eating kiwifruit with your breakfast can significantly reduce and slow down the uptake of sugars from your food into the bloodstream, which is good news for your blood sugar control

Healthy blood sugar control means that the level of sugar in your bloodstream does not go too high or too low. This helps to avoid the feelings of tiredness and hunger between meals. Poor blood sugar control is associated with chronic diseases linked to obesity, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The composition of fibre is unique in kiwifruit and behaves differently to other commonly eaten fibres (e.g. in apples, oranges and wheat bran). This is because kiwifruit has a very high water-holding capacity.

When eaten, kiwifruit fibre attracts water so that it swells and thickens like a gel. As your breakfast is digested, it is broken down into smaller sugars and these move more slowly through the gel. This results in sugar being taken up at a reduced rate into the blood and energy delivered more slowly.

Better blood sugar control can also help with:

• Losing or maintaining a healthy weight.
• Avoiding high-sugar snacks between meals (because you don’t feel hungry).
• Maintaining stable blood sugar levels as part of a diabetes treatment plan.

Throw a kiwifruit in your pre-workout smoothie and take advantage of its slow energy release

The glycaemic index (GI) ranks foods according to how they affect blood sugar (glucose) levels. Foods with a low GI value (55 or less) are more slowly digested, absorbed and metabolised, and cause a lower and slower rise in blood glucose.

Kiwifruit have a low GI (39 for Zespri Green and 38 for Zespri SunGold), which means that the glucose is less rapidly taken up by the body and only slowly released into the bloodstream.

This makes kiwifruit a perfect lunchtime snack, and a healthy option for people with a reduced tolerance to glucose, for example people with conditions such as Type I and II diabetes and insulin resistance.

― Kiwifruit: the athlete’s ally

Kiwifruit contains almost as much potassium as a banana

Potassium is an important mineral for the development of many different body functions:

• Is necessary for muscular contraction.
• Contributes to the maintenance of normal blood pressure.

― Kiwifruit: a natural source of folate

Vitamin B9, also called folate, is a compound synthesized by plants. The human body does not know how to produce, it is necessary to find good sources in the diet

Folate performs important functions in the healthy body, and sufficiently high levels are needed before and during pregnancy.

Are you pregnant or trying to conceive? Then the doctor will definitely recommend folate since this B vitamin helps in the development of genetic material. You cannot get all the folate you need from kiwifruit alone, but they make a first-class and delicious addition to any folate supplements you may be taking.

The amount recommended for women of childbearing age and for those trying to conceive or are pregnant is a supplement of 400 µg/day in addition to the 200 µg basic requirement. It is very difficult to meet folate requirements with food alone. Zespri kiwifruit contains 31–38 μg/100 g folate, making it a useful complement to folic acid supplements. As cooking destroys folate, fresh kiwifruit is an excellent alternative to cooked green vegetables. 

― Kiwifruit: a sweet indulgence that won’t tip the scales

Zespri SunGold contains just 79 kcal per 100 g, while Zespri Green contains 81 kcal per 100 g.

― Kiwifruit: keeps you healthy from the inside out

Zespri Green and SunGold kiwifruit are bursting with antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E and polyphenols. These antioxidants protect the body from free radicals, substances that damage cells in the body. If the antioxidant levels in the body are not sufficient, the body cannot properly protect itself from free radicals.

The antioxidant vitamin C delivers numerous health benefits, including:

• Helping to prevent aging by reducing skin cell damage from UV rays, pollution, stress and smoking and promoting collagen formation.
• Helping the nervous system to function well.
• Helping to keep the immune system strong.

References

• Dawson SI, Willis JA, Florkowski CM, Scott RS (2008). Cause-specific mortality in insulin-treated diabetic patients: a 20-year follow-up. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice 80: 16-23.
  
  
• Mishra S, Monro J: Kiwifruit remnants from digestion in vitro have functional attributes of potential importance to health. Food Chem 2012;135:2188-2194.
  
  
• Monro J: Kiwifruit – a double ag ent for glycaemic control and nutrient enhancement: 1st International Symposium on Kiwifruit & Health.
  
  
• USDA. USDA national nutrient database for standard reference (release 28). 2015.
  
  
• Bailey LB, Stover PJ, McNulty H, Fenech MF, Gregory JF 3rd, Mills JL, Pfeiffer CM, Fazili Z, Zhang M, Ueland PM, Molloy AM, Caudill MA, Shane B, Berry RJ, Bailey RL, Hausman DB, Raghavan R, Raiten DJ. Biomarkers of nutrition for development-folate review. J Nutr. 2015;145:1636S-1680S.
  
  
• European Commission. EU register on nutrition and health claims (2012).
  
  
• Prior RL, Gu L, Wu X, Jacob RA, Sotoudeh G, Kader AA, Cook RA: Plasma antioxidant capacity changes following a meal as a measure of the ability of a food to alter in vivo antioxidant status. J Am Coll Nutr. 2007;26(2):170-81.

• Mishra S, Willis J, Ansell J , Monro JA: Equicarbohydrate partial exchange of kiwifruit for wheaten cereal reduces postprandial glycaemia without decreasing satiety. Accepted, Journal of Nutritional Science (2016).