Antioxidants in Popcorn - the secret revealed

This post is dedicated to my dear mom who became a popcorn lover after following a strict diet to lose weight!!! She had named popcorn "the official snack" in her office and became the popcorn women! hahaha

When I went to Brazil to spend the end of the year holidays with her, she told me she wanted to lose weight, but she didn't know how long to do the diet for, or either what kind of diet to follow. So I  made some suggestions on how she could start the diet and that 30 days was the time necessary for her to lose the extra pounds. She followed the diet for 30 days, perfectly, was fulfilled with joy and happiness that she decided to take the diet further. Within the 30 days her body changed, her way to approach things in life changed, behavior, sleep, menopause symptoms vanished away. She was simply thrilled, and did not want to give all those great feeling up for a bar of chocolate. So she asked me for a good snack alternative between lunch and dinner, because that was the time that she was the most hungry! And popcorn came to my mind. However, I had no idea that she would LOVE it so much! hahaha


Last week,  I came across many web articles talking about a recent study done on popcorn. They found popcorn being a great source of antioxidant.And the first person who came to my mind after reading these articles was my mom, of course.

For many years, popcorn was simply viewed as a good snack because of its low caloric and high fiber content.  But now, researchers found that popcorn are packed with polyphenols, a class of antioxidants that counteract the effects of free radical in the body, which is the primarily cause of aging.

Per serving, plain popcorn contains nearly twice as many polyphenols as the average fruit. The researchers found that a single serving of popcorn - about two tablespoons of unpopped kernels - contained up to 300 milligrams of polyphenols, while the fruit contained only 160mg. This higher concentration of polyphenols in popcorn than in fruit is becasue of the water content in each of them. Fruits have a whole lot more water than popcorn.That's also why a single serving of sweet corn contains 114 milligrams of polyphenols. 
Some types of polyphenols are pigments, and are usually concentrated in the skin and seed of the fruit. In popcorn, they are found in biggest concentration in the hull or outer skin of the corn kernel - the stuff that gets stuck in your teeth when you're munching away. So don't throw that out!!!

Conclusion - A good bag of homemade, non microwaveable popcorn in a great snack choice. 

GO MOMMY!

source: http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/25/study-popcorn-packed-with-antioxidants/