Excerpt

Volume 2; page 91...
~Apricot~

Benefits:
• Cancer
• Controls blood pressure
• Saves your eyesight
• Slows aging process
• Shields against Alzheimer’s

Alexander the Great fell in love with this surprisingly sweet fruit in Asia, where he found them growing wild. When he returned to Europe from his military expeditions, he brought some with him.

The ancient Romans gave the apricot its name—from the Latin word for “precocious”—because the apricot is the first fruit of the season to ripen. The name stuck, and the apricot spread all over, from Europe to America and all the way to Australia.

The apricot is a fantastic fruit - loaded with beta-carotene, iron, fiber, vitamin C and several B vitamins and over 8,000 other nutritional components. If you dry an apricot, its nutrients get more concentrated, making dried apricots a great snack.

Whether fresh or dried, eating apricots will help you with the effects of aging, protect your eyesight, ward off cancer, and prevent heart disease.

Apricots, especially dried ones, are another source of lycopene, the amazing carotenoid that can help prevent prostate, breast and several other cancers. Though apricots are not nearly as good a source of lycopene—about 30 dried ones have the same amount as one tomato—munching on them throughout the day can boost your lycopene quicker than you think.

Apricots are also a good source of the most famous carotenoid of them all—beta-carotene. This powerful nutrient reduces your risk of some types of stomach and intestinal cancers. To get these benefits, eat about six fresh apricots a day, while in season.

Halts Heart Disease
Eating dried apricots as a snack can punch up your levels of iron, potassium, beta-carotene, magnesium and copper. These important nutrients help control your blood pressure and prevent heart disease. Plus, as few as five dried apricots can give you up to three grams of fiber, which sweeps cholesterol out of your system before it has a chance to clog your arteries.

Chases Away Cataracts
What you eat can affect your vision. Studies confirmed the importance of vitamin A for cataract prevention. The overall conclusion is that a well-balanced diet is needed for eye health. Since apricots are a good source of beta-carotene, which your body converts to vitamin A, and several other nutrients, they could be just what you are looking for.

Adds to a Long Life
Believe it or not, some people claim apricots are the secret to living to age 120! They get this idea from the Hunzas, a tribe living in the Himalayan Mountains of Asia. Common health problems, like cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, do not exist in Hunza. And researchers are wondering if apricots, a main part of their diet, are partly responsible. The Hunzas eat fresh apricots in season and dry them to eat during their long, cold winter.

A Word of Caution
Many commercially dried apricots are preserved with sulfites. Though these preservatives do not affect most people, they can bring on a life-threatening reaction in some asthma sufferers. If you have asthma, watch out for sulfite warnings on packages of dried apricots. It is best to play it safe – buy the non-treated type or stick with fresh apricots.

Although eating apricots cannot guarantee you will live a long life (you might eat burgers, fries and drink sodas), recent research suggests the little fruit may help you live a better life. The B vitamins in dried apricots may protect you from Alzheimer’s and age-related mental problems, such as memory loss.

Pantry Pointers
From June to August, the finest fresh apricots roll into your supermarket from California and Washington State. Keep your eyes peeled for the tastiest of the bunch. They will wear a beautiful, bright orange skin, and they will look and feel plump. Avoid apricots with yellowish or greenish tinges and those that are hard, shrunken or bruised, smell them.

Just like their cousin the peach, apricots can ripen on your kitchen counter at room temperature. When they feel and smell ripe, wrap them in a paper bag and store them in your refrigerator. They will stay fresh for several days.

During the winter months, satisfy your apricot craving with fruits imported from South America, or enjoy canned water packed apricots, jams, spreads and nectars, not as good as fresh, but hey!

The apricot is a delicious fruit, but one with surprises in store. The fruit is as temperamental as its tree, and still answers to a false name. It was thought for so long that apricots were a kind of plum and came from Armenia that botanists continue to follow Linnaeus in calling it Prunus armeniaca. It is a member of the Rosaceae family.

The apricot really comes from China, like the peach, and it too has a history going back 5000 years there. Five thousand years of domestication, however, have not entirely tamed it. It spread from China to northern India, the Punjab and Tibet, where it will ripen perfectly on sunny slopes up to altitudes of 3000 meters. Why, then, is it such an unreliable cropper in our temperate regions, to the despair of nurserymen? In principle, a fruit tree should bear well at least one year out of two, but this ancient mountain-dweller is coy, and a late frost or a strong wind can destroy all hope of the blossom which, admittedly, is very early. However, the apricot quite likes the Mediterranean climate, particularly in the Roussillon area.

Another enemy of the apricot tree, which likes limy and even stony soil, is drought, which can undo the grafting of the tree in a single night, giving it a fatal seizure which shrivels it up within a few days. It will not accept any ordinary fertilizer or manure either. The volume of fertilizer must be carefully adjusted, and it has to be right for the nature of the soil.

Even the name of the apricot, which in French was aubercot until the fifteenth century, has not just one simple etymology but is a combination of several, involving considerable juxtaposition of ideas. On the one hand we have Portuguese albricoque, Spanish albaricoque and Italian albicocca, all from Arabic al barqouq or al birquq, for the Iberian Peninsula owed much to the Arab gardeners of Andalusia. The Arabic word means “early-ripe”, and itself derives from Latin praecox or praecoquIm malum (in Greek, praecoxon), an early-ripening fruit, the name the Romans gave the apricot when it was brought back by legionaries returning from the Near East in the first century. Being easy to eat, it was also called aperitum (fruit which opens easily), and there is an association with Greek abros, delicate, for it does not travel well and ripens very fast. The idea that there was a connection with Latin apricus, ripe, may have given rise to the “p” in English “apricot,” which combines with the French – cot ending. The fruit is Aprikose to the Germans and abrikos to the Russians. But all these roads lead to Rome, whence the apricot spread through Europe. In Latin, apricot means “precious.”

Throughout the centuries, the fruit, kernels, oil and flowers of the apricot have been used in medicine. In China, a famous medicine known as “Apricot Gold” was made from the kernels of trees which grew in certain areas. This medicine was reputed for the powers to prolong life. The Chinese also believed that apricots reacted sympathetically to women's ailments. The apricot flowers, therefore, formed a common ingredient in their cosmetics.

• Constipation – The fruit is highly valued as a gentle laxative and is beneficial in the treatment of constipation. This is due to its cellulose and pectin contents. The cellulose, which is not digested, acts as roughage-that indigestible part of the food which helps the bowel movement and the pectin which absorbs and retains water, thereby increasing bulk to feces and stimulating smooth bowel movement. People suffering from chronic constipation can greatly benefit by regular use of apricots. Generally six to eight apricots used per day will produce the desired result.

• Indigestion – Apricots have an alkaline reaction in the system. They aid the digestion, if consumed before a meal. Marmalade, made from organically grown fruit, is also valuable in the treatment of nervous indigestion.

• Anemia – The apricot is an excellent food remedy for anemia on amount of copper in the fruit makes iron available to the body, the production of hemoglobin could be increased in the body by liberal use of apricots.

• Fevers – Fresh juice of apricots, mixed with glucose or honey, is a very cooling drink during fevers. It quenches the thirst and eliminates the waste products from the body. It tones up the eyes, stomach, liver, heart and nerves by supplying vitamins and minerals.

• Skin Diseases – Fresh juice of apricot leaves is useful in skin diseases. It can be applied with beneficial results in scabies, eczema, sun-burn and itching of the skin due to cold exposure.