How to Lower Blood Pressure: Eat a Pomegranate

Considering how many things don't live up to their hype (e.g., door-buster sales, Congressional committees, Snooki), you gotta give it to the pomegranate. Every year or so, another study rolls in reinforcing its rep as a superfood that’s good for fighting everything from inflammation to tumor growth. Soon they'll be up there with blueberries and walnuts.

The latest report: If someone you love (you?) has high blood pressure, heart-threatening high triglycerides (over 100), or low heart-protective HDL cholesterol (under 50), put pomegranate juice on your weekly grocery list. Drinking just 10 ounces of it a week for a year could impressively improve all three. We say this because pomegranate juice did exactly that in people who need all the heart help they can get: kidney dialysis patients, who are intensely vulnerable to cardiac trouble. (Pomegranate juice may also keep your colon cancer-free.)

Never been tempted by pomegranates? We YOU Docs aren't surprised. Their mottled, leathery outsides have the visual appeal of a red ball the dog buried. And unlike other fruits that call for spitting out the seeds, with poms you devour the seeds and spit out everything else. Plus those red, juicy seeds are stain-meisters, so while pomegranates are messily fun to eat, they're also a fashion hazard (death on white lab coats). Here's a simple, brilliant way to eat a pomegranate.

No wonder the pomegranate juice biz is booming. (Buy 100% pure juice, no sugar added.) But this is peak season for poms, so try the real fruit. Just wear black. Then enjoy every anti-inflammatory, anticarcinogenic, heart-protective bite.

Here are three more genuine superfoods that are super easy to find and eat!