Pomegranate Juice – An ancient fruit with health benefits.
Perhaps you are like me.
You recently discovered pomegranate juice and thought you had latched onto one of the most revolutionary super foods to show up in decades.
Actually, like me, you’d be correct about the super-food properties, but time-wise, you would be off by at least a couple of millennia.
According to POM Wonderful, the largest grower of the Wonderful variety of punica granatum (the Latin botanical name for the fruit), pomegranates are considered one of the oldest edible fruits in the world.
They are native to Iran and the Himalayas in northern India, but eventually were cultivated and naturalized to the Mediterranean region and to parts of China.
The audience of pomegranate lovers grew when Spanish missionaries brought them to the New World in 1521.
However, learning about the earliest pomegranate history requires reading the Bible and other religious and mythological literature, scrutinizing ceramics and artifacts unearthed from ancient tombs and studying the subject matter of historical paintings.
In Greek myths, pomegranates came to be known as a symbol of a lasting marriage when Persephone (goddess of fertility) was enticed into marrying Hades (lord of the underworld), who tempted her with a pomegranate.
When Aphrodite (goddess of love, fertility beauty) planted a pomegranate on the island of Cyprus, she began to be referred to as the goddess of abundant fruits.
The fruit has various symbolic meanings in Christianity including its meaning as the promise of life after death and of plenitude, hope and spiritual fruitfulness.
In Judaism, not only does the fruit indicate a geographical place that is desirable, but also a wish to possess positive characteristics as numerous as the pomegranate’s seeds.
The prophet Mohammed instructed the followers of Islam to eat pomegranates because they purged the body of envy and hatred.
Hinduism teaches that the pomegranate, a symbol of an appeal for god’s blessing, is also a bearer of good health.
Similarly, the Greeks revered the pomegranate as a medical remedy.
It was included in “De Materia Medica,” a pharmacological text authored by a Greek physician, which was quoted for 16 centuries.
The curative powers attributed to the fruit today are based on the polyphenols it contains.
Polyphenol antioxidants protect the body against free radicals, the molecules that contribute to the progression of conditions such as heart disease, cancer and premature aging.
Several years ago, growers of POM Wonderful, whose fields are in the San Joaquin Valley in central California, began juicing some of their fresh fruit so consumers would have access to the health benefits year-round.
Grocery store shoppers have become used to finding the bottles of 100 percent pomegranate juice — as well as juice confected of pomegranates mixed with blueberries, cherries, tangerines and mango — in the refrigerated section of the produce section.
Recently, the area of the supermarket you are in almost doesn’t matter; somewhere in your range of visibility you’ll notice a product that contains this idolized food item.
There are packaged tea bags, but the biggest splash today is POM Wonderful’s refrigerated tea.
-Adam
P.S. The remainder of the article has several pomegranate recipes but you have to register, it’s free, to read them.
Ancient fruit ripe with health benefits (Galveston County Daily News)
Perhaps you are like me. You recently discovered pomegranate juice and thought you had latched onto one of the most revolutionary super foods to show up in decades.
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