Vitamin C is famous as a home remedy for the common cold – it’s a powerful immune system booster, essential for the repair and growth of tissues in the body.
Antioxidants contained within the vitamin also help protect you from free radical damage. The catch is, our bodies don’t produce and store this vitamin naturally – we have to get it from external sources, like food and supplements.
That’s why vitamin C supplements are so popular, and sold in large quantities at most pharmacies.
But for many people who seek to avoid genetically modified foods in all forms, vitamin C supplements present a conundrum – most of them are made using genetically modified ingredients (1). Fortunately, vitamin C supplements can be easily made at home, and for relatively cheap – all you need to do is to save the peels from your organic oranges, in order to turn them into a homemade vitamin C supplement.
How To Make Homemade Vitamin C Supplements
Ingredients:
- Orange peels from organic oranges
You will also need a dehydrator, a blender, and an airtight container for this recipe.
Instructions:
Save your citrus peels from the oranges you eat – it’s important to use organic oranges for this recipe, lest you ingest pesticides that have soaked into the peel. Arrange your saved orange peels onto dehydrator trays, then dehydrate them at 100 degrees F for about 24 hours. Use a blender to grind the dried peels up until they are finely ground. These peels can be stored in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.
How It Works
Citrus peel contains, gram for gram, more vitamin C than the citrus fruit itself. They also contain multiple different antioxidants known as flavonoids. Naringin, for example, is found in grapefruit, lemon, and mandarin orange peels.
Naringin can even reduce radiation-induced cell damage (2). And citrus peel flavonoids have other health promoting properties – some of them can help combat certain types of cancer (3). It’s easy to reap the benefits of vitamin C using citrus peels, without having to rely on genetically modified supplements.
Incorporating Dried Citrus Peel Into Your Diet
Of course, eating dried citrus peel can be unpleasant – it doesn’t have the best taste, and it takes quite a bit to get your daily recommended dose of vitamin C. That’s why it can be helpful to use dried citrus peel in cooking – it can be used in baking recipes, in glazes and marinades for meat like chicken, pork, and fish, and in teas as well! There’s no limit to the number of ways you can incorporate dried citrus peel into your regular diet.
sources:
[1]https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/Organic/vitccontro.php
[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23694763
[3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11142088