Avocado has earned its superfood status time and time again, and now researchers are giving us one more reason to love the healthy fats-packed fruit: Eating it can help prevent and treat metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is the presence of multiple risk factors that increase your risk of diabetes, stroke and heart disease. These risk factors can include low HDL cholesterol (AKA “good” cholesterol) levels, high blood pressure and a large waistline. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute says that metabolic syndrome may even overtake smoking as the top risk factor for heart disease. Scary stuff.
But there is good—nay, great—news. A review of 129 studies about avocado and metabolic syndrome, published in Phytotherapy Research, found that avocados can help prevent and treat essentially every aspect of metabolic syndrome. Eating avocado helps lower bad cholesterol and triglycerides (fat found in your blood), and it also helps you drop pounds. One study in the review found that overweight adults who ate an avocado every day for six weeks drastically decreased their weight, BMI and body-fat percentage. The best part: Most of these studies recommend eating avocado every day. You heard that right: Every. Single. Day.
Brb, going to make all the avocado toast.
