Why Onions, Especially should be Eaten Fresh and Raw?

It is a well-known fact that onion is a veggie that makes you cry, but did you know it makes the bacterial infections also cry? Yes, they do. Onions which are full of organic sulfur, vitamins, minerals, fibers and antioxidants help strengthen your immune system to fight against any kind of infection and thus drive them away!

Also, onions are great anti-carcinogens and give you a load of health benefits only when consumed raw. Here's what you will benefit from on munching down a handful of raw onions:

1. Keeps cancer at bay - You will stay completely away from any form of cancer (stomach, colon, breast, prostate, and lung cancers) and your body will develop enormous resistivity power against dangerous viral infections as well.
2. Lowers your Blood Pressure - Eating chopped onions in the raw form along with your daily food will lower your BP count and strengthen your veins, arteries and nerves, thereby keeping you away from BP related disorders.
3. Cleans your digestive tract - Eating raw onions is said to lower your constipation and is well-known for keeping the germs from your oral cavity and digestive tract at bay.
4. Natural detoxifier - Raw onions are the best known natural detoxifiers that cleanse your lungs thoroughly. This will be of great help to people who have stopped smoking recently or those who want to detoxify their lungs off the nicotine residues they have been inhaling so far.
5. Drives away common cold and flu - As already mentioned, raw onions are natural antioxidants and therefore will keep your body away from the common colds and seasonal flus that spread everywhere.
6. Purifies your blood - Well-known for its cleansing action, raw onions leave your blood purified too. Thereby your kidney is in safe hands too. They also help in maintaining a healthy urinary tract, lower hemorrhoids if any in your body, and also lower the risk of blood clotting in any part of the body.
7. Treats open wounds - Raw onions help heal the open wounds quickly. Diabetic patients, who suffer with long time unhealed open wounds will benefit a lot by eating raw onions.

Now, coming to the most important part of the article - what happens when you cook the onions or do not consume them fresh?

Onions are rich in sulfur, nutritional content and most importantly, a compound called “Allicin”. When you cook onions, nutritional value is lost, sulfur is evaporated and allicin is destroyed. Thereby, you just get to eat the flavor that onions, add to your diet and you kill its nutritional supplements in the flame.

When you chop them down and do not use them immediately, you are letting the sulfur in the onion build up and the nutritional value and allicin dry up. Thereby, you get nothing other than eating loads of sulfur (which is considered bad when taken over the limits). All this comes to say “eat freshly chopped onions - immediately”! This is not a veggie you can cut and store - do remember!

Considering that eating onions in the raw form is not comfortable for all (some complaint of bad breath and the others say it is not palatable), here are ways to include raw onions in your daily diet regimen:

• Use chopped raw onions in your sandwich. Along with the cheese and other stuffing, make a layer of onion and gulp the tasty sandwich down
• You could use it as a veggie dip when you are eating veg rolls or snacks
• Crush down chopped onions along with 2 pearls of garlic, mix it with a teaspoon of honey and eat the mixture. This will be of great help when you have a stuffy nose and you will cured soon too - remember, it keeps away common colds and flus!
• Combine baked potato with raw onions and use it as a stuffing in your interesting chat items like samosas and bhel pooris.
• If you are one who can munch down on slices of onions without any of the above said options, there is nothing good like it!

No matter you eat the red, yellow or green onions or even the shallots; you give your body the dash of all the above said benefits. All you have to do is eat ‘em raw!

Did you know?

Onions are grouped under the Satvic diet in Ayurveda. It is also referred to as the Yoga Diet or Sentient Diet and brings the Sattva characteristic in oneself. When foods are stored for a long time, they lose their essence and succumb to microorganisms and hence are named “tamasic”. On the other hand, overly-sweet food substances are referred to as “rajasic”. Adding too much of sugar, salt or spices to satvic diets will make is rajasic or tamasic, and in turn will harm the human body.