The Healthiest and Most Delicious Produce for Winter Season

Published November 15, 2017 | By Gecko Websites

Ah, it’s winter season again. That time of year when the leaves have already changed color with most of them almost completely fallen away while the colder temperatures are becoming more constant. With the arrival of winter, some people have the impression that produce growing season has now come to a complete halt. We don’t agree with the notion of a halt, but do however think that the fall and winter season has some of the best tasting produce. The big question is which ones are the most delicious and most healthy? Luckily, we’ve curated a list of awesome fruits and vegetables that we know you’ll love, along with their health benefits.

In case you missed it, we’ve also written this lovely post on the impact of the seasons on what we eat. Feel free to give that one a read as well!

Kale

Kale is possibly the most popular super foods around. You can certainly enjoy kale during the winter season as it’s a super food that battles allergies in addition to being a garnish for your your salads, stir fry and meals. As a low calorie, high-fiber vegetable, kale is one of the most nutrient dense foods in the planet with an abundance of vitamins and antioxidants, which may also help reduce the risk of heart disease. Kale is known as a vegetable with a preference for growing in cooler temperatures, so you can also try your hand at growing them yourself this winter so that you can pick them straight from your garden. This article has great tips on how you can grow kale in your home vegetable garden.

Leeks

Leeks are very versatile vegetables that are easy to prepare and also have tons of benefits for this season. Considered one of the healthiest foods on the planet, much like kale, leeks contain lots of vitamins and antioxidants that provide benefits to help regulate blood flow, in addition to contributing to good heart and bone health. Leeks can also help to reduce the risk of chronic inflammatory diseases like diabetes and arthritis. Here’s a great article that contains tasty leek recipes you can use as inspiration!

Pomegranates

Pomegranates sometimes go under the radar as one of the tastiest and healthiest fruits you can enjoy in the winter time. Pomegranates are rich in iron, vitamins and antioxidants. Adding pomegranates to your diet could give you numerous benefits like supporting digestion and heart health. There’s not much preparation needed too as pomegranates can be consumed raw. If you’d like to increase your intake, you can check this article out, it outlines 11 ways you can make the most out of pomegranates from drinks, to desserts to salads.

Kiwi

Kiwi, although popular, isn’t the ordinary fruit we know it to be. Carrying on with our health theme, kiwis are a good source of dietary fibre and a good digestive aid. In addition to the well known health benefits that can be derived from kiwis, did you know that they could be a source of better sleep? Now this doesn’t mean that if you eat a dozen kiwis, you’ll automatically have better sleep as there are quite a few other things you’ll need to do to achieve this consistently. However, you’ll still be doing yourself no harm if you integrate more kiwis into your diet to see how they can positively impact your sleep. Psychology today suggests that eating kiwi could have significant benefits for sleep quantity, quality and efficiency. They attributed this to some of the characteristics of the fruit like high serotonin.

The rest

In the interest of keeping this post quick and exciting, we’re combining the rest of our recommendations into one final group. Once you’ve gained a great understanding of what’s in season, you’ll find that the cold weather shouldn’t really be an excuse to stop eating the best fruits and produce that’s available to you. So we’ve already provided a few suggestions, but you can still enjoy winter squash, radishes (depending on the variety), clementines, celery, grapefruit, orange, carrots, and cauliflower. Just like with other seasons, you can get a wide variety of quality food (especially if you’re a strong proponent of shopping locally) at reasonable prices. While there’s no hard rule that says you need to be limited to these fruits or vegetables, it’s worth noting that they will certainly help prepare your immune system for the harshness of winter.

One thing to keep in mind is that you’d be supporting your body’s natural nutritional needs by eating seasonally as well. If you’re having difficulties figuring out how to get started, don’t hesitate to look up in-season recipes and food charts that will outline what’s available in which season. That can be a great first step to getting started, from there, you van always venture out and do deeper research into the specific health benefits you can gain from from eating the fruits and vegetables on our recommended list.

To conclude

There you have it! That about wraps up our list of produce that should be on your watch list this coming winter season. It’s very important to understand the seasons and follow suit by adapting how and what we eat during the coming season. No matter how irrelevant we think it is, our food choices have a huge impact on our overall health and how we function. Winter can often be overlooked by many people as a season of healthy eating because of how extreme the weather can get and also because it isn’t as simple to go shopping for certain foods as it is in the spring or summer. If you’ve always been on the fence or dabble, but haven’t been consistent with eating what’s in season, now is the time to try something new. At the end of the season, you’ll have a chance to evaluate how well the decision to stick to the foods in season worked. if all goes well, you’ll be bragging about your love for how to eat more of what’s in season to friends and family!

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