Oranges in Winter

by Rob English

Do the tips of your fingers get cold when you’re out on a winter day? Eating oranges can help! Science has found that our brains will signal our circulatory systems to pump less blood to our extremities when we’re cold outside, thus increasing blood flow to our body’s core to keep it warm. It’s a clever survival mechanism, but it can make for an uncomfortable trip outside. Eating oranges increases the blood flow to all parts of our body, including flow that warms our uncomfortably cold fingers and toes.

By the same principle, eating oranges increases blood flow to our brains, which has the effect of helping to protect us against stroke, a leading killer. Feeling stressed out? Reduce your meat and fat intake, learn to de-stress, and eat oranges!

Inside our cells, the nutrients from orange and other citrus fruits not only help to protect our DNA but have been found to favorably influence the expression of more than three thousands of our genes!

Taking vitamin C in pill form does little for us compared to eating an actual orange. In general, eating a whole fruit or vegetable provides nutrients which act in concert to promote our physical well-being whereas an extract made from the same source rarely works as well. Orange juice is much better than just taking a vitamin C pill, but juice alone lacks the pulp and flesh of a whole orange which besides providing nutrients balance the sugars in the juice and slow them as they enter our bloodstreams. Whole oranges are best.

The vitamin C in a pill, for example, doesn’t help our cold fingers or our brains’ blood flow. The flesh of the orange does. People even benefit from eating orange zest – orange peel – in small amounts, which has been shown to be protective against some cancers.

Oranges are not available in every corner store, but I recently found a good supply of them at a reasonable price at Brady Market on Gifford Street in Syracuse.

If you walk to market in winter, eat an orange to help keep your hands warm!

P.S. The data to support the assertions in this column are gleaned from the fine research available in video form with optional Spanish subtitles at https://nutritionfacts.org/2017/09/07/nutritionfacts-org-en-espanol/

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Rob English is a member of People for Animal Rights, a grassroots organization in Central New York. Rob wrote and translated this article.

Contact People for Animal Rights
P.O. Box 3333
Syracuse, NY 13220
(315) 708-4520
peopleforanimalrightsofcny@gmail.com
https://parcny.org/

3 oranges in a analog scale and branch with oranges photos by Eneida Nieves and Eva Elijas from Pexels.