Good For You

TRICK OR TREAT!

October means Halloween, and Halloween means jack-o-lanterns. However, once November hits and the trick-or-treaters have all disappeared, don’t smash your pumpkins, mash them! Pumpkin, along with several other members of the squash family, is very good for you. Similar to melon and other squash, it has an extremely high water content (94%!), which makes it very low in calories. In fact, one cup of pumpkin cooked from raw and mashed checks in at a mere 50 calories, almost all of which are from carbohydrates. It is also a good source of Vitamin A, and contains high levels of several important minerals. The nutritional value lies primarily in the flesh, and in one cup you can expect to find:

Potassium 564 mg Magnesium 564 mg Iron 1.4 mg Riboflavin 0.19 mg Calcium 37 mg Fibre 4 g With so many important ingredients, make sure you put that leftover pumpkin to good use. If you have lots of kids (and therefore lots of jack-o-lanterns), it can also be shredded and frozen. And if mashed pumpkin with dinner doesn’t appeal to you, try the suggestion at right. After all, a good jack-o-lantern is a terrible thing to waste!