With a taste from heaven and a smell from hell, you’ll either love it or hate it.
It’s categorised as a fruit but for some reason it’s never occured to me that durians might actually have some nutritional benefits. Or rather I think a lot of my presumptions about durians being bad for you stem from the fact that the Chinese believe durians to be a “hot” fruit.
To explain this further, food are usually classified as “heaty” or “cooling”. When I was young, I seemed to get the impression that “heaty” foods were bad for you and “cooling” foods were good. In reality, it really depends on your situation and your health. In general, young people should not eat too much “heaty” foods and old people should not take too much “cooling” foods. There is a long and more complicated explaination behind this which is partially explained here.
Anyway, I never even thought to look up the benefits of eating durians until it “cured” a minor little problem I had developed during the course of my pregnancy.
During pregnancy, the body increases the release of the hormone relaxin which acts on the smooth muscles in the body, including those in the digestive tract. The purpose of this is to facilitate the absorption of nutrients by slowing down the digestive process. Unfortunately, it causes the unpleasant side effect of constipation.
When I introduced durians into my diet, I’d also noticed an improvement in bowel movements. Intrigued, I decided to take a look at what nutritional benefits durians actually provide to the consumer and needless to say, I was quite surprised by what I discovered.
One serve of durian (about 243g) yields 9g of fiber (no wonder it brought an end to my toilet worries!). It’s also a great source of Vitamin C and some forms of Vitamin B (such as Thiamin, B6, Riboflavin, Niacin and Folate).
For the full details about the nutritional value of durians click here.
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June 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
[...] king of fruits, the Durian has often been known as the fruit that “tastes like heaven and smells like hell”. A [...]