Red Onions Vs White Onions

 

And now we are going to talk about flavonoids.

But first just a bit about onions in general.

I feel like onions are like garlic just bigger and juicer. But that's not really true. Onions and garlic have a completely different chemical makeup. 

But they are both super healthy foods when eaten raw, I know that a lot of people hate to hear that one because they are so tasty when they are cooked. Even tastier when fried, yum.

The problem is that when you cook them you lose those healthy flavonoids, that's what gives them that strong flavor.

Onions, red and white, as well as garlic are rich in vitamins, minerals and flavonoids. But red onions have an extra type of flavonoids called anthocyanins. These bad boys are a powerful plant pigment that may be helpful in fighting off some nasty diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

This is not fully proven but there is research to support the statement.

Here is just one example.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1082903/

Here is a short part of the article linked above.

"Research over the past decade has produced incontrovertible evidence for a vast array of health benefits arising from the consumption of fruits and vegetables. In an endeavor to identify the active health-promoting ingredients, many researchers have focused on the properties of the flavonoids, a large class of phenolic compounds that is abundant in such foods. Most prominent among the flavonoids are the anthocyanins—universal plant colorants responsible for the red, purple, and blue hues evident in many fruits, vegetables, cereal grains, and flowers. Represented by over 600 molecular structures as identified to date, anthocyanins are of particular interest to the food colorant industry due to their ability to impart vibrant colours to the product. Now it seems highly likely that they also enhance the health-promoting qualities of foods."

So in short the difference between red and white onions is the anthocyanins.

And in that little cut and paste I did there I also explained about the flavonoids, well they explained it for me.