I don't think the world ever have unripened mangoes, unless they were made into chutney, pickles or if you're Vietnamese, perhaps will make fresh mango salads with them. With different variety of mangoes in the Philippines, except for the native ones, 99% are eaten raw. For Filipinos, the taste of the ripened ones aren't that good anymore so that any standing non-native tree, one will find occasional, hard to reach ripened fruits where they will just left to fall to the ground. Even after a typhoon where the ground will be full of fallen fruits, they are snubbed or will be thrown in the garbage. Unfortunately, that's how we treat these awesome fruits just because there are so many when in season. One's backyard, from the neighbours or from where we got some this morning, at the plaza where anyone is welcome to them. Am not joking.
Rich in carotenoids, Vitamin C, A and polyphenol compounds, these are antioxidants and anti-inflammatory that without a doubt beneficial in the body. Personally, anything that contains antioxidants can fight CANCER. How it is with mangoes can be found in this article, called the KING OF FRUITS, am sure there's more to it than meets the eye. Interestingly from the same article, what caught my eye is the benefits of lowering the blood sugar. That's fascinating, does everyone know of this? I certainly didn't know before now!
Can mangoes lower one's blood sugar?
An abstract of a small study where a group of over-weight individuals were given a daily dose of frozen mangoes for 12 weeks. One finding was that, they were found to have lower blood sugars but there were no effect on their weights. This is just one study and i find it promising, don't you? Please check this out yourselves.
Unripened, they are very sour. Filipinos like it sour, in fact, we still dip them in vinegar! But we are not that brave as we either mix it with seasalt (this is rare nowadays!) or with sauteed anchovies. A very unhealthy habit that every adult is a culprit. But it does make eating it taste much better.
A healthier habit is to simply eat them ripe, right? This can be blatantly said that this is age-related as no young ones will eat them ripe. Raw mangoes can be eaten socially, in public or privately. That's how much it is liked.
If raw mangoes can lower one's blood sugar, how about one's lipids?
A study that came out from the British Journal of Nutrition in 2011 have this result where the group that has the frozen-dried mangoes resulted to a higher glucose tolerance and a better lipid profile in contrast to the other groups that received mild hypoglycemic and cholesterol-lowering drugs.
This sounds much better, right? I am assuming that both studies in this post used ripened but frozen-dried mangoes? Obviously, ripened mangoes have natural sugars from its' carbohydrate content. Raw mangoes doesn't have any sweet taste at all unless they get to maturity and become a bit ripe but still green to yellowish and not fully ripened.
Native mangoes are better eaten ripe, there's no question there. The other types are favored to be eaten raw, locally and abroad.
Commonly eaten anywhere, the idea that these fruits when raw can just be effective in controlling one's blood sugar and cholesterol. Perhaps more studies are needed to fully know if this practice can be utilised as a diet management in preventing diseases such as Diabetis, Atherosclerosis and Heart Disease.
Food as medicine, anyone?
Please do your own research or further research is needed if we want to know more about this topic.
All images were taken with my Samsung Galaxy S7.