Real Reasons You Should Eat Your Fruits and Veggies with the Skin- Nutritionist

It is paradoxical to always embark on peeling of fruit or vegetable skin on health grounds, while experts have condemned the act, saying the skin of most vegetables possess the healthiest part of the produce.

Aside the herculean task of peeling, which consume one’s precious time, it was also found that peeling of fruits leaves the plant based food with lesser than half of the phyto substances, after the most-valued healthy components must have been lost through peeling.

In a Daily Mail Online chat with a certified nutritionist and registered dietician Mary Jane Detroyer, based in New York, about why we shouldn't be peeling our vegetables and all the hidden benefits found in the skins, she disclosed that there are several reasons to be leaving the skin on, and the main reason is what you deprive your body of when you peel it off.

Detroyer who submitted that the rind of produce like potatoes, carrots, and cucumbers all have plenty of health benefits, noted that the skin has a lot of fiber and it's insoluble fiber, especially when the skin is colourful.

Citing cucumbers as typical example of fruits that must be eaten with the skin, she said the dark green skin contains the majority of its antioxidants, as well as most of its vitamin K.

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And the skin of a potato packs more nutrients - iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, vitamin B6 and vitamin C - ounce-for-ounce than the rest of the potato.

The registered nutritionist further named potato as a good veggie but must be consumed with the skin for ultimate benefits to be derived. “People, when they make mashed potatoes, often feel they have to peel the skin off. But they can just boil the skin and mix it right into the rest of the mashed potatoes”, Detroyer said.

Explaining that the skin of vegetables contains antioxidants that fight against free radicals, she described free radicals as groups of atoms that can cause damage to the body when produced in excess, such as heart disease.

While stating that Vitamins C and E are found in many vegetables, she advised everyone to endeavour to cultivate the habit of eating their fruits- pawpaw, mango, guava, carrot, watermelon; beetroot, and others with the rind, to enhance maximum protection of the body against the destructive effects of free radicals by neutralizing them.

Are you convinced beyond any doubt on this now?