Contents
Description
Clementine is a hybrid of mandarin and orange, very similar to mandarin. Clementine is hardly sold under its own name in our stores, but about 70% of the tangerines brought to our country from Morocco are precisely clementine hybrids. So our consumer is very familiar with this fruit.
The clementine plant (Citrus clementina) was first bred in 1902 by the French priest and breeder Brother Clement (Clement) Rodier. Its fruits resemble mandarin in shape, but are sweeter.
Clementine fruits are small, orange in color, round with a hard skin, tightly attached to the juicy pulp. Clementine is notable for its sweet taste and lack of seeds in the fruit.
Clementines are rich in vitamin C and other nutrients. In some cases, there are contraindications: like other citrus fruits, clementines can be dangerous for people with diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. Clementines should not be consumed concurrently with drugs, since the substances they contain often increase the effect of drugs several times.
Composition and calorie content
Clementine contains vitamins: B1, B2, B5, B6, B9, C, E, PP and useful substances: calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, selenium.
Caloric content: 47 kcal per 100 grams.
The chemical composition of clementine: 0.85 g protein, 0.15 g fat, 10.32 g carbohydrates.
Types and varieties
Now there are more than a dozen different varieties of clementine, which differ in size, ripening season, geography of growth.
We will mention one of them – the Fine de Corse variety, which is grown in Corsica; there it is protected by the geographical appellation of origin – La clémentine de Corse with the status of IGP (Indication géographique protégée).
The benefits of clementine
Clementines are rich in antioxidants like vitamin C, which can help improve the health and appearance of your skin. They can also help increase your fiber intake.
Clementines are rich in antioxidants that help reduce inflammation and prevent cell damage caused by free radicals. Thus, antioxidants may play a role in preventing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many other conditions.
Along with vitamin C, these fruits contain a number of other citrus antioxidants, including hesperidin, narirutin, and beta-carotene.
Beta-carotene is a precursor to vitamin A, which is commonly found in orange and red plant foods. This powerful antioxidant promotes healthy cell growth and sugar metabolism.
The citrus antioxidant hesperidin has potent anti-inflammatory effects in some animal and test-tube studies, but more human studies are needed.
Finally, some animal and test-tube studies have shown that narirutin can help improve mental health and could potentially help treat Alzheimer’s disease. However, more human studies are needed.
It May Improve Skin Health. Clementines are rich in vitamin C, which can improve skin health in several ways.
Your skin naturally contains high amounts of vitamin C, as this vitamin helps the synthesis of collagen, a protein complex that gives your skin its firmness, fullness and structure.
This means that consuming high amounts of vitamin C from your diet can help provide the body with enough collagen to keep your skin looking healthy and potentially younger, as adequate collagen levels can reduce the appearance of wrinkles.
The antioxidant activity of vitamin C can also reduce inflammation and help reverse free radical damage, which can help relieve acne, redness, and skin discoloration.
Although a single clementine contains only 1 gram of fiber (dietary fiber), eating several throughout the day is an easy and tasty way to increase your intake.
Fruit fiber serves as food for the beneficial bacteria in your gut. It also increases volume and softens your stools, reducing constipation, potentially preventing diseases like diverticulitis, which can occur if digested food gets into polyps in your digestive tract.
Fruit fiber can also help lower cholesterol levels by binding to dietary cholesterol and preventing it from being absorbed into the bloodstream.
In addition, fiber from fruits has been linked to a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, while high fiber intake has been associated with healthier body weight.
Potential harm to clementines
Some studies have shown that clementines contain furanocoumarins, a compound also found in grapefruit that can interact with certain heart medications.
For example, furanocoumarins can potentiate the effects of cholesterol-lowering statins and cause serious complications. For this reason, if you are on statins, you should limit your intake of clementines.
Additionally, furanocoumarins can interfere with other medications. Talk to your doctor about a possible interaction between your medications and clementines.
Clementine in cooking
Clementine fruits are consumed fresh and for the manufacture of tangerine juice and compote. They are used in fruit salads and desserts; they are candied and added to brandy; juice is frozen for sorbet and mixed with drinks; liqueurs are made on clementines. As a spice, clementine is used for making sauces, fish, poultry, rice dishes.
Fruit rind is used as a substitute for orange peel in the preparation of various medicines, infusions, syrups, extracts, as well as in the food industry.
How to choose and store clementine
To pick a good fruit, look at its skin. A dried, sluggish or in places woody skin indicates that the fruit has been lying for a long time or is overripe. Unripe clementine is heavy, the skin is almost all green and peels off very poorly. A sign of poor quality clementine is the presence of mold, brown spots, or areas of decay.
It is very easy to determine the ripeness of clementines by the ratio of its size and weight, since all ripe clementines always weigh less than they seem at first glance.
Clementines are best preserved in a special compartment of the refrigerator, where they do not rot and do not dry out for up to a month. But even in this case, the fruits must be viewed regularly: if, before the vegetables are stored for storage, the process of decay has already begun in the fruits and they were spoiled, then a decrease in temperatures will not stop it.
At room temperature, clementines deteriorate even faster, and in a too warm room they also dry out, losing not only useful properties, but also their taste.
The simple method of storing fruit in a plastic bag, so popular with most people, is actually bad: high humidity is created in the bag and the fruit suffocates.
It is believed that the fruits on which the twig has survived stay fresh longer, but these are extremely rare on sale.