Don’t Look, It’s All Gone

It used to be when guyabano was just a part of the backyard fruit trees, just like mangoes, star apples and avocado.  I clearly remember when I was growing up in the province, my lola used the leaves for nausea (hilo), crushing them a little and letting the person smell them.  She said that it was so effective.   We never appreciated it then, preferring the commercial variety of guyabano concentrate drink where you will just add water and presto, you have a refreshing guyabano juice.

I once received a forwarded e-mail  about the efficacy of guyabano as treatment for cancer. I asked my cardiologist once and he told me, it is still not proven. Of course,  some doctors would always choose the  safest way to answer such questions, right? Since I was diagnosed with colon cancer and undergone chemotherapy, I’ve always been researching for some alternative way to fight it- may it be food or herbal medicines which are so abundant here in our country.   The study on the effectiveness of guyabano as cancer treatment might not have been made public yet, those big corporations reeking money producing and manufacturing those costly drugs would not want to have their business goes kaput. You can  probably buy a  whole truck  of guyabano on a single P60,000.00 session of chemotherapy.

Lately, I included this wonderful fruit as part of my daily diet.  Eaten raw, just a little cold from the fridge, it really taste so good.  The white edible pulp is high in carbohydrates and dietary fiber. It is also low in cholesterol, saturated fat and sodium.

Don’t look now, that plateful of this delicious fruit is all gone!

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Suha, Lukban, Grapefruit, Pomelo

Call it  by any other name but it is still the same.  We know it locally as lukban, at least in our Pangasinan dialect. And Dad has planted about one or two grapefruit trees which are now bearing fruits.  The flowers, when they bloom smell just as sweet as oranges.

Since I was diagnosed with the big C (my friend doesn’t want to call it this way since you can fight and conquer it), I have this penchant for eating citrus fruits like guyabano or sour sop aside of course from the ever reliable apples.  There was a study made on guyabano and it was found out that it is ten thousand  times more powerful in fighting cancer than chemotherapy. And unlike chemotherapy, it does not kill the good cells in your body.  Lately though, I’ve been enamored with this sweet, delicious treat, the pomelo.  We found a good, reliable fruit vendor in our neighborhood and she sells them for about a hundred pesos a kilo. Sometimes, one pomelo  weighs more than a kilo but it is all worth it.  This variety has just that right degree of juiciness, tart and the skin is so thin and the plumb pulp bits taste heavenly.  It’s seedless too. I’ve learned to peel it,   sectioning  and getting the meat intact from the rind with bare hands and the process is a joy in itself.  I learned from my lola from way, way back that you should not use a knife in peeling pomelo so it won’t taste bitter.  Young as I was, I believed her of course.

The health benefits of grapefruits are too many to be overlooked.  Its rind contains many anti-cancer agents that help fight certain diseases  It is a food rich in flavonoids which can inhibit the activation of carcinogen.

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