Bananas are high up there when it comes to fruits rich in nutrients. If you live in tropical areas like Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, bananas are a part of your life. Except you are allergic, or you just don’t like their taste.
Sold by local vendors on roadsides, in open markets and malls, many people pair bananas with their meals like rice or just snack on it. You can also add slices of it to your cereals, make creamy smoothies, banana bread, muffins and whatever else you can think of.
Your only limitation with bananas is your imagination.
It also happens to be one of the super fruits. One medium-sized banana contains 422 milligrams of potassium, which is excellent for your heart health. It’s rich in fibre, good for your gut health, gives you the energy to exercise and contains good carbs, meaning diabetic patients can eat it too. Little wonder they are very popular and consumed by many.
However, there’s the right time to eat bananas according to the stage of their ripeness.
Let’s take a look at the right time to eat bananas.
Underripe
At this stage, they contain prebiotics. Prebiotics are undigestable carbs, but they’re the food source for probiotics, the good bacteria found in your stomach.
Probiotics can help handle diarrhoea, relieve yeast infection symptoms, and help with irritable bowel and other gut problems.
Barely ripe
Barely ripe bananas are high in fibre and low in sugar. If you’re using bananas for weight loss, then these are the best ones to buy.
Ripe
The ripes ones are high in antioxidants and fibre. This means they help fight free radicals in your body and protect you from falling ill.
Very ripe
The very ripe variations are lowest in vitamins and mineral contents. This means you don’t really do much for your body when you eat very ripe bananas.
Overripe
Overripe bananas have the highest sugar content than the others and has the lowest fibre concentration. It’s not advisable to consume many of these kinds as they’re not great for your health.
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