Breakthroughs Today

In addition to its popular use as a mildly acidic juice, passion fruit has been found useful in providing both soluble and insoluble fibers to the body, a proven diet that brings down bad cholesterol from the body and consequently protects the person from circulatory diseases later on.  AT TIMES passion is a fruit of love. Although the same is true the other way around.  What I love about passion fruit (Passiflora edulis) though is the sweet citrus taste that is milder compared to regular orange or calamansi. Eating it, however, is another story.  I tried extracting the juice directly in my mouth the way I usually eat poncan oranges, pulp and all except for the seeds.  Yet passion fruit can be unwieldy that way. I ended up feeling less satisfied in relation to the effort I put in getting the juice into my mouth. Thus I decided to proceed the usual way: place sufficient amount of scraped juice-filled seed-sacs into a glass of water, add a small amount of water and s

The DOST Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) recently issed a survey showing that 34 to 53 percent of Vitamin C consumed among Filipinos came from vegetables. Fruits merely contribute around 19 to 29 percent as a source. More than 50 percent of Vitamin C intake among adults, the elderly, and lactating women came from vegetables. Adolescent and pregnant women comprised 42.2 and 41.7 percent, respectively. Children have the lowest use of vegetables as Vitamin C source, contributing only 34.6 percent to diets among 6-12 agers and 17,2 percent among those ageing 6 months to 5-year olds. Vitamin C-rich vegetables include leafy greens like malunggay, ampalaya, petsay, saluyot, peppers (red and green), sitsaro and raw cabbage. Despite this figures, only 3 in every 10 households met the estimated average requirement (EAR) for Vitamin C, which is 80 percent of the recommended intake of the vitamin. And worse vegetable consumpion is on the downtrend over the years. It has decreased