HWN Suggests

Love Onions? You Won’t Believe Their Storied History

Onions themselves are fine-tuned biological fighting machines. The compounds generated when an onion is bitten, nibbled, sliced, chopped, diced, or otherwise disrupted are the onion’s anti-pest defense mechanism, a phenomenal battery of repellants nasty enough to discourage most onion attackers from ever coming back again. When onion cells are damaged, the onion goes into red alert, releasing enzymes that act upon ordinarily benign sulfur-containing organic compounds to produce a barrage of malodorous, painful, and highly reactive molecules. It doesn’t pay to mess with an onion.

read full article

Featured

 The vegetable that treated gunshot wounds

Onions have so much going for them, even gladiators were massaged with onion juice before entering the arena. Here's what else they're known for.

 What Makes Onions So Healthy? It’s Quercetin

Onions are an overlooked vegetable. Whether they’re being sautéed for a soup, sliced for a burger, or pickled for a salad, onions rarely steal the show of a meal, although they often inspire a sob story. Onions are most known for their pungent flavor, not necessarily their nutritional value. Their white flesh (even in red onions) isn’t always perceived as being as nutritious as vibrantly colored vegetables like kale, broccoli, or beets. But that’s no reason to snub onions. Although some onion varieties are lacking in color, onions in general are one of the highest natural sources of a powerful flavonoid: quercetin.

Articles of Interest

Are Onions and Garlic Healthy? Here’s What Experts Say

Garlic and onions — which are part of the allium family, along with shallots, leeks and chives — have so many health properties that they are often considered medicinal foods, especially in healing traditions like Ayurveda.

Are Onions Healthy? Here Are 8 Science-Backed Benefits and Nutrition Info

Adding onions to your meal rotation is a smart (and tasty) move in part because the health benefits of onions are plentiful. Thanks to their nutritional value, accessibility, and delicious flavor, it's no wonder onions are a staple in cuisines across the world and form the flavor base for a wide variety of dishes

Health Benefits of Eating Red Onions

This versatile culinary plant can provide a real health boost to anyone. But exactly why are red onions good for you? This article sheds light on the health benefits of onions, particularly red onions, and explains how the nutrients in onions — including quercetin, allicin, and chromium — can protect against cancer, fight fungi and bacteria, promote cardiovascular health, reduce high blood pressure and insulin resistance, and aid in weight loss.

Healthy Onion Rings? Yes Please!

Onion rings are things I always stay away from at restaurants, for obvious reasons. But, if you really love them, consider making them the healthy, and equally delicious, way...

How India’s Onions Explain the Developing World

Few foods in India are consumed in larger quantities than the onion. It’s a crucial ingredient in most traditional dishes, and at a high rate of production is one of the cheapest foods you can buy. Until recently.

How to avoid crying while cutting onions, according to physics

Suggestions to avoid the dreaded onion-induced tears in the kitchen run the gamut of ideas—from freezing them, to cutting them underwater, to sporting special goggles, to even stuffing some bread in your mouth beforehand. But what’s the actual science say about how to escape your next onion encounter unscathed?

Onions

Onions have an amazing array of medicinal benefits and are high in vitamin C, folate, biotin, chromium, and calcium. Onions are the richest food source of quercitin which is a potent antioxidant that has been shown to lower cholesterol, blood pressure, and triglycerides as well as help to prevent blood clots, asthma, sinus infections, bronchitis, atherosclerosis, and diabetes. They also contain powerful anti-cancer properties which have been found to help slow and reverse tumor growth within the body.

Onions! Onions! Onions!

You can eat them raw or fried. In a salad or on a burger. Caramelized onions pair well with steak. You can purchase dried, minced, fresh, frozen diced and/or pearl onions in a jar. There are several options such as sweet onions, vedalia onions, purple/red spicy onions, shallots, and/or scallions.

Onions--a global benefit to health

Compounds from onion have been reported to have a range of health benefits which include anticarcinogenic properties, antiplatelet activity, antithrombotic activity, antiasthmatic and antibiotic effects.

Raw Onions Are the Best Food. Let Me Explain

When cooked, the onion is a sturdy and gracious supporting character that quietly allows the dish to take center stage. But when consumed raw, sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, a bitter alchemy transmutes its heat into an experience so intense that a single bite contains an entire sensory universe.

Science vs religious belief: Benefits of garlic and onion

Onion and garlic are culinary staples worldwide, but in some Hindu traditions, they’re seen as detrimental to spiritual practice. This article separates fact from fiction, exploring the health aspects and cultural beliefs surrounding these flavorful ingredients.

Stop the Tears: Why Onions Are Good for You

Onions are part of the Allium family, a group of spicy, sharp root vegetables that includes garlic, leeks and chives. They’re especially high in organosulfur compounds. These chemicals give onions their strong odor and taste (and make you cry). They also have many health benefits. “People have used onions for medicinal purposes for centuries,” says registered dietitian Gillian Culbertson, RD, LD.

The Science Of Why Onions Make Us Cry

Why do onions make us cry? Many a poet has pondered. Is it because their beautiful, multilayered complexity moves us to weep? Are we mourning the majestic bulb as we cut it up and consume it? Or are these tears induced by the tragic tedium of chopping, chopping, chopping? Yes, yes. All of the above.

Why I can never eat onions or garlic again

For the ancient Egyptians, eating an onion was like biting into a piece of eternity, so enamored were they of the vegetable’s spherical shape and concentric circles, supposedly representative of unending time.

Why onions make us cry (and why some don’t)

Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Cleopatra may have referred to “the tears that live in the onion”. But why do onions actually make us cry? And why do only some onions make us blub in this way when others, including related “allium” plants such as garlic, barely ever draw a tear when chopped?

‘The Core of an Onion’ Review: A Tale Both Raw and Sweet

Prized for their nutritional value, onions are beloved around the world. Tears are tolerated.

Resources

National Onion Association

We are the onion authority, representing America’s onion growers and its supporting industry. We compile and disseminate onion industry information and lobby for the industry’s interests in Washington D.C., as well as monitor international trade.

National Onion Association

We are the onion authority, representing America’s onion growers and its supporting industry. We compile and disseminate onion industry information and lobby for the industry’s interests in Washington D.C., as well as monitor international trade.