ONION – Simple plant with lot of health benefits

In my previous posts we saw about the Natural properties of Garlic that help our Blood systems & whether Garlic helps diabetes patients.

Now, after a small break, in this post let us see about another plant similar to garlic, that is ONION. Both onion and garlic are members of the allium family and are sometimes called allium vegetables. The word onion comes from the Latin word called "Unio" which means single or one and used to refer unity.

Onions are native to Asia and middle-east and also in Egypt.

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In India onions have an important place in everyone’s kitchen to prepare tasty dishes. There are many varieties in onions like white, red in colours and small and big in sizes. See the picture for some colourful Onions.

Does onion brings tears - How and Why? Is it because of its High price? Ha Ha..! 

Answer for this million dollar question is the gases that are releasing while cutting the onions reach with our eyes and mixing with the water in the eyes creating some sulphuric acid which irritates the eyes. 

Although there is no foolproof way of avoiding these tears, a few successful trials include rinsing the onions in cold water before cutting, or chewing something while cutting the onions.

The phytochemicals (Set of compounds produced by plants that may affect human health) in the onions, called flavoniods, are considered an anti-oxidant, hence it helps to improve our immunity system.

Since onion contains chromium which helps to regulate blood sugar. Onion helps to reduce inflammation and heal the infections. Raw Onions have got medicinal properties which help the production of good cholesterol that is HDL.

Onions are also used to protect against some forms of cancers and heart diseases because of its medical properties called QUERCETIN. Onions can be taken even in boiled form. When they are boiled the property of QUERCETIN does not get degraded. Check out the article regarding phytochemicals and plant compounds that help Human health.

My suggestion is eat, raw onion slices mixed with other vegetables with few lemon pieces. Or take some raw slices; add some lemon drops, salt and pepper. Onions can be taken with rice also. I need not explain much about how the onions are used in our kitchen because it is one among our regular routine usages.

I have given some information and usages of Onion, if you have anything more to add please share here.