Power Couples

Pretend you’re not reading a food blog right now…if I were to ask you to name a ‘power couple,’ what would you say?

Brad and Angelina? William and Kate? …What about chickpeas and red pepper?

Probably not the last one – but I hope after you read this post, the term ‘power couple’ will have a whole new meaning to you.

Current research shows that pairing certain foods together stimulate health-promoting factors that far outweigh what you’d get from eating either food alone. I guess that old adage was right: ‘the whole IS greater than the sum of its parts.’

Here are three big ones:

1. In July, I wrote a post called Two Best Friends – Iron and Vitamin C which explains why chickpeas and red peppers are our power couple #1. Chickpeas are a good source of iron, which is something the body has a hard time absorbing from whole grains, legumes, and leafy greens because of its chemical composition. However, vitamin C found in red peppers is able to unlock the plant-based iron to enhance iron absorption. What a good team!

2. Spinach and Avocados – three cheers for better vision! One of the many functions of vitamin A is that it improves our vision. It’s also a fat-soluble vitamin, which means it’s absorbed by our bodies with dietary fat. Therefore, when you combine spinach, which contains a high amount of vitamin A, and avocados, which contains heart-healthy fat, another dream-team is created!

3. Green Tea and Lemon Juice – for cancer prevention. Green tea, green tea, green tea…it’s all about green tea. However, did you know that only 20% of the cancer-fighting catechins (the phytochemical found in tea) survive the digestive process to do your body any good? To help out these little guys, add lemon juice to your tea, which has been shown to boost the number of catechins you absorb by up to 13 times.

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Image courtesy of OlenkaSergienko