Fruit Nutrition is Important for Your Health

What do you get from the Nutrients in Fruits?

Fruit nutrition is extremely advantageous to your health – vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytochemicals and lots of fibre. Phytochemicals are found mainly in plants and help to protect your health. Antioxidants kill free radicals, which are harmful substances that are in the body. Fruits are cholesterol and fat-free.

Fruit nutrition is generally made up of 70 to 80 percent water. Fruits contain natural sugar, and since we as humans are born with a sweet tooth, they are easy to consume. They taste very nice and are enjoyable. So they’re not hard to incorporate into your lifestyle or increase in your diet.

A Fruit-eating Habit

Have you heard the saying “an apple a day keeps you from the doctor”?

Why not adopt an apple a day at the least. When I say eat an apple a day, I don’t mean to stop at that. Go further and eat some other fruits every day so that you can get the benefits of the nutrients in fruit.

You can make a habit of eating fruits before and after lunch, or before and after every meal.

Don’t forget your kids – the nutrients in fruits are essential for them too.

The other great feature of fruits is that they don’t need preparing or cooking, just wash and you’re off to the races. Just make sure they are always in the fridge!

Make a habit of eating fruits. When you are on your way to work, munch some fruits – strawberries, grapes, plums, tiny tomatoes are all easy to pop into the mouth as you work at your desk or watch TV. You can also slice fruits into your breakfast cereal or yoghurt.

Or, you can even ‘drink’ the fruits! Count your blessings, one of which is good old juicing!

Fulfilling the fruits part of the experts’ 5 A Day recommendation for you is even easier than the vegetables part. This is because you can juice the fruits and then drink; or you can just simply blend the fruits together and drink that.

Juicing or Blending

Or you can juice or blend with healthy yoghurt to add another flavour.

Some people say eating the fruits whole is better than juicing. They are right in the sense that most people refer to juicing assuming the pulp will be removed. When you remove the pulp, you can add to a cake or biscuit mix you plan to bake, or also add the pulp to your beans being cooked, or to any other meal! Just find a way to eat the pulp too, because that is fibre that you need from fruit nutrition.

This is the reason I prefer to use my other juicer that works exactly like a blender. I simply blend them altogether without separating out the pulp. Admittedly, for some people it’s easier and more pleasing to the mouth to drink a “smooth” smoothie with no pulp.

That’s ok too – just strive to eat the pulp someway too. And if you don’t currently have a habit of eating fruits, and may not like the pulp yet, don’t worry about it just yet – just start eating fruits anyway. We’ll get to the pulp bit gradually. Half-fruit nutrition is way better than none.

The nutrients in fruits also help to build up the immune system.

5 A Day

Health experts, nutritionists and dieticians that tell us about 5 A Day tell us that eating five portions of fruits and vegetables everyday can help prevent or fight cancer and heart disease, and many other lifestyle diseases.

1 serving or portion of fruits is approximately equivalent to:

• 1 pear

• 1 apple

• 1 medium carrot

• A handful of strawberries

• 1 banana

• 1 peach

• 1 glass of unsweetened fruit juice

More Benefits of Eating Fruits

Some other benefits of the fruit nutrition that we get, is that they:

• Help to fight diseases such as cancer, heart disease and so on.

• They are anti-allergic.

• They are anti-inflammatory.

• They are anti-viral.

• They help regular elimination of toxins.

• They are anti-carcinogenic. Carcinogens in the body contribute to causing cancer cells to grow or multiply.

• They help to boost the immune system.

• They help to prevent and fight against infections.

• They greatly reduce the risk of your likelihood of contracting a wide range of diseases.

Natural fruit nutrition is something you should not be missing out on, both for your kids and you.