Pomegranates: A Powerful Fruit for Health and Cultural Significance
When you think of the pomegranate, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is it the sweet-tart flavor? Maybe it’s the pervasive question, “How do I cut this open,” or the juice that’s been so popularly branded. Depending on your cultural background, this fruit may hold another connotation and a beautiful symbolism that can be honored during the winter months especially.
What Are Pomegranates?
Pomegranates (also known as grenade fruit) are a cultivated fruit, meaning they are grown with intentional nurturing—such as the care and practices of a farmer—and are originally from where we now recognize as Iran and the Mediterranean region.
In part due to their historical symbolism representing values revered by many cultures (fertility, immortality, abundance) this fruit was cherished and carried along many of the largest trade routes that brought it across the East and Europe, eventually making its way to the Americas.
Pomegranates have a variety of powerful health benefits. Their polyphenol content may quell the inflammatory processes found in many chronic diseases and has potential therapeutic benefits in everything from prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease to improving bone health.
Pomegranates in Holiday and Winter Traditions
Many winter traditions and holidays tend to share common symbolism of keeping faith during tough times, exhibiting resilience, and cherishing the fruits of this hopeful behavior with resulting sweetness, the promise of life, and sometimes, even a miracle.
As pomegranates have very thick skins that require a sharp knife to penetrate to get to the edible arils, the resilience of this fruit is one of the many reasons it is honored in the more tough conditions of the winter. See how you can incorporate pomegranate into your celebrations.
Advent and Christmas
Share with those gathered around your table how pomegranate was incorporated into your meals to represent resurrection and eternal life. It can be included in your holiday dinner or as one pomegranate split and enjoyed with the whole family as a sweet evening treat. Enjoying this fruit whole is a healthier option rather than cookies or other highly processed sweets common during Christmas festivities.
Hanukkah
As much reflection happens over the several days and nights of Hanukkah, pomegranates have an opportunity to represent the many blessings a community may be grateful for as well as the hundreds of mitzvot in the Torah that guide actions, often described as commandments for the Jewish people. A family-friendly activity that overlaps with mindful eating practices may involve sharing a pomegranate at the table and with each aril, reflecting on different blessings experienced by each person, or remembering and honoring different commandments as a learning activity.
Yalda Night
Yalda Night is celebrated at the winter solstice as it is the darkest time of the year, where pomegranates represent rebirth, light, fertility, and abundance. As the family stays awake throughout the night sharing food with one another in the significance of this holiday, pomegranates may be a food more easily shared communally while stories and poems and classic Persian literature are read aloud to all.
Greek New Year
Greeks have their own relationship with pomegranates with the myth of Persephone having consumed pomegranates, leading to her inability to be allowed to permanently return from the underworld. Pomegranates may be incorporated during the Greek New Year by adding arils in salads in recognition of her as a symbol of the natural cycle of life and death, the changing seasons, and the everlasting nature of marriage.
Pomegranate Recipes for the Holidays or Anytime
To showcase how this fruit can be incorporated in everything from dinner to dessert, check out the recipe ideas below for your next adventure with this beautiful fruit.
- Enjoy it for breakfast with a Pomegranate Smoothie Bowl to start your day
- Make pomegranate center stage by serving Pomegranate Glazed Salmon for dinner
- Top salads like this Beef Tenderloin or Butternut Squash Salad with arils for a delicious and eye-catching garnish
- Mix pomegranate juice into drinks, such as this Apple & Pomegranate Lemonade or a Double Berry Mocktail
- Use the fruit to flavor healthy desserts, like Pomegranate Cocoa Treats or PaleoFLEX™ Pomegranate Raspberry Recovery Gummies
How to Pick, Open, and Eat Pomegranates
Pick
Whether you’re at the grocery store or farmers market, choose a pomegranate that feels dense. When holding, it should feel heavy for how big it is in your hands. This reflects the juiciness you’ll likely find inside.
Next, look at the exterior. Ensure the skin is firm, free of cracks or spoilage spots, and vibrant in color. Imperfections are fine, but signs the fruit has been compromised by bugs or other outside forces means you should probably choose another.
Lastly, you don’t need to choose the perfectly round pomegranate! When the sides look a bit geometrical with slightly sharp angles, it may mean the inside is bursting with seeds. Pick that one!
Open
No matter how you choose to open your pomegranate, always be sure to wash your produce.
One simple method involves cutting off the top of the pomegranate (often called the crown) with a sharp knife. Use caution and reserve this task for an adult. Look for faint lines that flow down from the crown along the skin of the pomegranate. Those slight ridges in the skin are like dotted lines for your knife—cut along them, but not too deeply.
Next, place the pomegranate in a bowl of filtered water and gently begin to pull it apart along the natural sections of the fruit. You’ll notice the white, pithy material may rise to the top of the bowl while the seeds or arils tend to go to the bottom of the bowl.
Carefully pour the water out of the bowl, leaving the arils behind. Gently pat the dry enough to store, put in an airtight food storage container, and place in the fridge.
Eat
Enjoy over the next few days, but do not eat after one week.
