Food Facts: Did you know?

The best way to speed up the ripening of an avocado is to store it in a cool dark place in a paper bag. The bag will trap the ethylene gas, causing it to ripen more quickly — but still allows for an oxygen exchange that plastic bags will not.

You shouldn’t use extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) for cooking, especially at high heats. EVOO has a low smoke point, meaning it is damaged at any temperature above a low heat. This causes oxidation and creates free radical damage to the oil and food in which it’s cooked.

You hamper your digestion process when you drink water with a meal. Water dilutes the digestive juices in your stomach, affecting its ability to breakdown food.

In the book, The World’s Healthiest Foods, here are the top five foods and their scores on the total nutrient-richness chart:

The way to tell the difference between a fruit and a vegetable is by slicing it open. If there are seeds inside, it’s technically a fruit. Some common foods we normally consider vegetables that are actually fruits include: tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, cucumbers, and avocados.

The best food sources of calcium include: best – spinach, collard green; very good – basil, cinnamon, Swiss chard, and kale.

Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a hard thing for your body to digest. Unlike glucose, which is processed and absorbed through most organs in the body, fructose can only be processed through the liver. So limit your intake of fructose each day, especially high fructose corn syrup and fruit juices. The fibre in whole fruits makes it a better choice — but limit yourself to two pieces a day. Fruit is best taken in the morning on an empty stomach without any other foods.