The edible podded peas called Sugar Snap Peas or also known as Snap Peas had been grown by humankind since the 19th century in Europe. They can be seen as a cross between snap peas and snow peas. Snap peas can be eaten raw or cooked first without removing the seeds from the pod. Usually served as salads or snacks, these peas have a unique sweet taste with a crisp texture. Underneath the savory sweetness of snap peas lies a staggering amount of nutrients and vitamins. This bushy plant is known to boast many useful benefits to your health, and it might be a good idea to add them to your daily diets.
Nutrients Amount in Sugar Snap Peas
Sugar snap peas contain a high amount of vitamin C, vitamin K, and vitamin A. It also contains a lot of vitamin B varieties, such as folate, riboflavin, niacin, and thiamine. Each and every one of these vitamins is beneficial to your health, especially when consumed daily. According to the DRI a.k.a. Dietary Recommended Intake, which is a recommended amount of nutrients your body should take per day, every 100 grams of sugar snow peas fulfill 72% of your daily vitamin C needs.
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Sugar snap peas are also rich in essential minerals that are good for body health. The minerals commonly found in snap peas are iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, and phosphorus. They act as a supplement to other nutrients and vitamins in keeping your body fit and healthy.
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Sugar snap peas belong to the plant family of legume, which is known for its high amount of fiber. Fiber helps your digestive system by smoothing the flow of your bodily wastes through your body. As sugar snap peas contain a high amount of fiber, they are suitable to become a side dish for your normal diet. One thing to remember, fiber needs a lot of water to function properly, so make sure you’re hydrated enough when consuming a lot of fibers.
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Thus, it shows that sugar snap peas have many nutrients which are vitamins and minerals that is absolutely good for body. Thus, one serving of sugar snow peas may complete the daily needs of vitamin and mineral. Here is the health benefits of sugar snap peas.
1. Boosts Immunity
The beta-carotene and vitamin A found in sugar snap peas increases the growth of immune cells in human body. Snap peas also contain a high amount of vitamin C, which is a powerful antioxidant that’s water soluble. These vitamins help safeguard your body from harmful free radicals and foreign infectious invaders, keeping your body healthy and immune from bodily diseases.
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2. Promotes Blood Clotting
Vitamin K is known as the fat-soluble vitamins that could prevent excessive bleeding by helping the blood to form a blood clot. Blood clots are formed by combining the blood cells with the proteins in your plasma. They are automatically formed everytime your body receive an injury that results in bleeding. If the injury was too severe, the injured might lose a lot of blood before the blood clot could be formed to stop the bleeding. Vitamin K speeds up the process in which the blood clots faster, thereby might prevent a serious blood loss.
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3. Improves Bone Health
Another known use for vitamin K is increasing new bone cells growth rate, which in turn helps against bone fracture and bone cancer to some extent. The vitamin B6 found in sugar snap peas also improve bone health by reducing the risk of osteoporosis. These vitamins also help your bones to keep the calcium absorbed by your body, and a good amount of calcium in your bones makes your bones stronger.
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4. Good for Pregnant Women
Folate or folic acid is one of the B-complex vitamins. It is especially important for every expecting woman since it could prevent neural-tube defects from happening to their babies during pregnancy. One serving of 100 grams provides your body with 10.5% of recommended daily folate intake.
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5. Improves Heart Health
Vitamin B-complex, especially the vitamin B1, B2, and B3, are antioxidants and help reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases by quite a significant amount. This is one of the reasons why people eats cereals and whole grains as their breakfast. Sugar snap peas contain not only these B-complex vitamins but many other antioxidants such as beta-carotene as well. Thus, consuming sugar snap peas daily could considerably improve your heart.
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6. Improves Eyesight
Vitamin A is known for containing antioxidant flavonoids which help your body maintain a healthy eyesight and mucous membrane. A typical serving of snap peas provides 37% of your daily recommended intake of vitamin A.
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7. Reduces Anemia
As a good source of iron, snap peas could help your body transporting oxygen in blood throughout your body quickly and effectively. This results in reduced effect received from fatigues and anemia. Iron also help to increase the blood cell formation and metabolize protein. A cup of snap peas contains around 20% of your daily iron needs.
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8. Prevents Diabetes
Other minerals commonly found in snap peas are magnesium, which is known for its abilities to control blood sugar levels and promotes normal blood pressure. Lower blood sugar levels reduce the risk of diabetes. Sugar snap peas also have a low glycemic index, which can help in reducing diabetes risk.
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9. Better Calcium Absorption
Manganese is a mineral that helps your body to absorb calcium from your foods better among many other beneficial things. A good calcium absorption could lead to healthier bones and may prevent bone diseases such as osteoporosis.
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10. Lowers Cholesterol
Due to the low fat contained in snap peas, they can lower your cholesterol if you switch your diet to it. The high amount of fiber also helps to reduce the blood cholesterol levels and could prevent obesity.
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11. Improves Digestion
As aforementioned before, fiber really helps your body when it comes to digestion. It aids your bowels in breaking down anything you eat into absorbable food components which in turn processed into useful nutrients and vitamins. The fiber also helps against constipation and bloating.
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12. Weight Loss
Snap peas contain virtually no fat, but high in nutrition that provides many benefits. Adding this sweet delicacy into your routine diet could really reduce your weight drastically.
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You probably never expected that something tastes this good holds so many beneficial attributes. Normally, food that tastes good is bad for your health, and vice versa. Well, sugar snap peas are not one of those “normal” foods. Other than the high nutritious value that’s healthy for your body, snap peas have other benefits as well.
13. Guilt-free Snacks
Compared to the green peas, snap peas are lower in calories, containing only about 42 calories per 100 grams against the green peas 81 calories per 100 grams. However, sugar snap peas hold more vitamins and minerals in contrast to green peas. Such a highly nutritious but low-calorie snack surely suitable for everybody who loves to snack in between meals.
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14. Tastes Good
Sugar snap peas taste really good even the kids like them. As you might already know, kids often dislike vegetables and fruit because of the taste. With this tasty nutritious food, you can finally give your kids something healthy they won’t object.
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Thus, there are health benefits of sugar snap peas. They fit into a lot of tasty recipes, and you can experiment with a near limitless option when cooking this delicacy. You can fit sugar snap peas with pasta, soup, stew, stir-fry, boil, and more. Keep in mind though that some cooking method are actually bad for your health, such as deep-frying. As a result, sugar snap peas has many benefits for overall health.