DIET 911
ROBERT IRVINE
Everythin
revol
PAIR THE
PASTE
Guava paste and
farmer’s or mozzarella
cheese pair well as a
starter or as fillings
for empanadas.
C Horse
Guava contains five times the scurvy-fighting
vitamin that oranges do. BY JOY RONSON
A PEAR-SHAPED FRUIT with a
light green or maroon skin, guava is
as commonly eaten in Asia as the
apple is here. Native to tropical
Central America, guava trees can
attain a height of 30 feet. The fruit
offers a unique, sweet taste while
also fighting disease and improving
your physique.
A single guava fruit provides more
than six times the vitamin C that a
man needs in a day. Guava is lower
in sugar and higher in fiber than
apples and bananas, and extract
from its leaves is used to treat
diabetes. A 2010 study in Nutrition &
Metabolism found that it keeps
blood sugar down. Best of all, unlike
most other produce, guava has a
heightened natural resiliency
against insects, so excessive
pesticides aren’t required to grow
and harvest it. That means you can
snack on it safely without fear of
ingesting heavy chemicals.
Pick up guava in your supermarket
or health-food store and eat it raw,
or look for it in juice or jam form.
Guava is so potent that even when
it’s processed into juice or jam or
consumed long after its harvest
date, it retains much of its power.
A study in Plant Foods for Human
Nutrition found that guava juice still
satisfied the RDA for vitamin C after
time in storage.
FEBRUARY 2016
MUSCLE & FITNESS
83