Prunes

This article is part of a larger article titled "100+ Healthiest Foods On Planet Earth."  Read it here.

A prune is a catch-all term for a dried plum. While this may seem to be a confusing choice for an article on some of the healthiest foods the world has to offer, it should be noted that there are many cultivars grown specifically for drying, and there are benefits to digestion that are seemingly unique to prunes. Not only that, but prunes exhibit an interesting amount of diversity when it comes to how they are cooked: in compotes, tagines, and fruit pies, or simply covered in chocolate! With some great nutritional, antioxidant, and digestive benefits, the prune is an interesting addition to a healthy diet.

Nutritionally, prunes are certainly far off something like kale, but they do provide decent amounts of certain key nutrients. 100g contains 28% of your Daily Value (DV) of dietary fibre, an important component in digestive health (more on that below), in addition to 20% DV of potassium, 15% DV of vitamin A, and 10% DV of both B6 and magnesium. With vitamin A being essential for the health of the eye, and potassium, magnesium and B6 all being relatively common deficiencies with implications for cardiovascular health, a little goes a long way when it comes to nutrition.

In addition to this, plums do have a couple of verified health benefits. Firstly, they are excellent for digestion (in fact, the connotations of prunes with relieving constipation became so strong they are now marketed as ‘dried plums’ in order to appear more upmarket than a glorified laxative). A sugar which prunes are high in, sorbitol, has a mild laxative effect, and prune juice has been shown to have a mild laxative effect, which is important for those suffering from constipation, or more serious gastrointestinal symptoms.

Beyond this, the real headline is the antioxidant activity of prunes: important for preventing damage by free radicals, which often damage DNA (leading to mutations and cancer), and cells (leading to cell death and tissue damage). The presence of neochlorogenic and chlorogenic acid, in high concentrations, in plums and prunes, is also an interesting benefit, as these antioxidants have been found to neutralise a ‘superoxide anion radical’, an especially damaging free radical, giving prunes a wide base of antioxidant effects.