A healthy and balanced diet is hard to achieve and maintain, as the pressures of everyday life can make it hard to eat as we should all the time. But there are some non-negotiables when it comes to health, and that is eating foods that are as packed as possible with vitamins and antioxidants that make out bodies work better. If they have additional benefits for parts like our guts or our bones, that is just a perk that we will gladly accept. One of the foods that is not consumed nearly enough and that has all the health benefits that you can think of is prunes, and you should consider adding them to your diet, especially if you are an older woman.
When it comes to following a healthy diet, it is easier to focus on adding foods that help our bodies than it is to eliminate those that we know we should not be eating as much of. Adding fruits and vegetables is a very important part of living healthily and can actually curve cravings for sugary or fatty foods that negatively contribute to our health. Dried fruit like prunes actually have a double advantage if we are in this “addition” stage, as they are sweeter than normal fruit, making it a treat, but they still pack a punch.
But prunes also have another advantage that has been well-known for years, and that is that they facilitate going to the bathroom, which if you have a poor diet is a very good benefit to take advantage of.
The multiple advantages of consuming prunes in relation to our overall health
Prunes are dried plums, and they can be delicious when prepared properly. They also have a very impressive fiber content, about 7% of their total weight, which helps them keep the digestive tract moving and supplements a poor diet with fiber quite easily. But this is not just because of the fiber, they also have sorbitol, a type of sugar alcohol that helps pull water into the intestines and acts as a natural laxative (if you want to test this theory in a major way, try to eat more than a couple sugar free Haribo gummies, you will regret every single life choice you have ever made).
The benefits of prunes are well established, back in 2012, the European Food Safety Authority took a look at the evidence and found that eating at least 100 grams of prunes daily can help maintain normal bowel function for most people, but that is not the only thing that they are good for. A study in Osteoporosis International found that postmenopausal women who ate 4 to 12 prunes a day for a year held onto their bone mass, strength, and structure while those who did not actually lost bone density.
And the antioxidants that they have are also quite helpful, as MedlinePlus explains, they are natural or synthetic substances that help prevent or delay certain types of cell damage and can be found mainly in fruits and veggies. Some examples of the most well known are beta-carotene, lycopene, selenium, lutein, and vitamins A, C, and E.
These antioxidants lower the chances of developing certain diseases, although many have argued that correlation does not mean causation, and that those who consume a lot of antioxidants do so because of a healthier diet, so that could be a better explanation for the health differences.
However, as good as prunes are for your health, eating a lot of them can actually be counterproductive and cause stomach issues which can disturb your microbiome, so consume them in moderation every day and you will reap the benefits without any of the nasty side effects.