Popcorn is good for your heart Now, here's some good news for a
Monday morning: all that popcorn you guzzled over the weekend
could have been doing you the power of good. It's long been
known that red wine contains antioxidants, thought to help
prevent heart disease by increasing levels of 'good' cholesterol
and protecting against artery damage - and now it appears that
the popcorn you eat with it does too. Indeed, says a team from
the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, it has more of the
beneficial polyphenols than fruit and vegetables, largely
because it contains so much less water. It's the same reason
that dried fruits hold more polyphenols than fresh ones. It's
the hulls of the popcorn - the bits that get stuck between your
teeth - that appear to hold the most, says Dr Joe Vinson. "Those
hulls deserve more respect," he says. "They are nutritional gold
nuggets." Up to 300 mg of polyphenols were found in a serving of
popcorn, compared with 114 mg for a serving of sweet corn and
160 mg for all fruits.