What is Lucuma and what is it good for?
You’ll often find that supplements will include ingredients you’ve never heard of. Sometimes, this can be a bad thing - those ingredients you can’t pronounce could be artificial ingredients or chemical compounds.
In other cases, you’ll see whole foods ingredients that just aren’t that widely known. This is true of lucuma, a fruit native to South America from the tree Pouteria lucuma. Not only is lucuma a widely used offering in religious ceremonies across the continent, it is also the most popular ice cream flavour in the whole of Peru! With the wonderful moniker “gold of the Incas”, lucuma has been consumed and used in traditional medicine and remedies for centuries, and is now becoming more popular in supplements and health foods in powder form due to its purported health benefits.
Let’s take a look at what some of these benefits are…
Lucuma is nutritionally superior to sugar: Lucuma is naturally sweet, and is often likened in flavour to butterscotch, maple, sweet potato, and pumpkin. In powdered form, it can be used instead of traditional sugars and sweeteners. However, when compared to other sugars and sweeteners, lucuma powder has a superior nutritional profile. If comparing the nutritional profile of lucuma with sugar, for example, lucuma powder contains half of the carbohydrate content, and 75% less sugar (Yahia and Guttierrez-Orozco, 2011). It does still contain around 1.5grams of sugar per serving, which means that it still shouldn’t be consumed in huge quantities!
Lucuma is a natural source of fibre: Lucuma is a fantastic source of both soluble and insoluble dietary fibre, something which other sweeteners lack. Dietary fibre is vital for good gut health. Insoluble fibre helps to clean your intestine and move food through your digestive tract preventing constipation, whilst soluble fibre helps to feed the good bacteria in your gut. Fibre also helps to prevent inflammation and can alleviate the symptoms of certain conditions such as Crohn’s disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (Yang, 2012).
Lucuma is a source of antioxidants: Antioxidants help to protect the body. These compounds prevent damage caused by free radicals. The oxidative damage caused by free radicals can lead to cancer and other serious conditions. Lucuma’s yellow colour comes from the high amount of antioxidants called xanthophylls, which are believed to promote eye health, and the polyphenols are believed to assist in preventing certain chronic conditions like diabetes. These polyphenols are also thought to protect against heart disease, and promote heart health! (Fuentealba et al., 2016)
Lucuma is a good source of Vitamin C: Vitamin C holds antioxidant properties itself, but it deserves a separate mention as it is part of so many important functions in the body! From supporting the function of your immune system to helping to build collagen in the body, Vitamin C is vital, and lucuma is packed with it!
Lucuma may help to regulate blood sugar: The majority of the carbohydrate content found in lucuma is composed of complex carbs. This means that lucuma contains more starches and fibres as part of its carbohydrate makeup than sugars, which are simple carbohydrates that can cause spikes in blood sugar levels. Research even suggests that lucuma may hold properties similar to those of drugs used in the treatment of diabetes, although more research is needed! (Fuentealba et al., 2016)
Here at Vivo Life, we choose to use the best whole foods ingredients to add both flavour and benefit. We use lucuma powder for a burst of flavour in our Blueberry & Lucuma THRIVE, our organic greens powder and multinutrient supplement, as well as for its antioxidant properties. In addition, THRIVE contains 10 billion live cultures per serving, turmeric to aid digestion and ease inflammation. Plus it tastes delicious!
