Fruit: Fruits
Daily Serving Suggestion: 3
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Apples, berries, melons, stone fruit, bananas, kiwi, citrus, berries, melons, grapes, mango, stone fruits, vine fruits
Fruits, like vegetables, provide us with invaluable vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that contribute to our overall health and vitality. Fruit eaten in season always tastes the most delicious and is certainly the most nutritious. Eating a variety of locally grown fruit will supply a rainbow of colors that contain the really powerful health promoting phyto-nutrients and antioxidants.
Dried fruit is a good option, frozen which is great for snacking because you have to eat the pieces slow or you will get brain freeze. And frozen is always good to have on hand to make smoothies.
Canned is my least favorite option because of the potential that it is packed in sugary syrup and the fact that the can may be lined with BPA – a known carcinogen that we all need to be avoiding.
Watch out for juice – again, adding a cup or two to a smoothie is great and adds flavor, adding juice for cooking or baking for flavor instead of sugar. But juice wanna bees- avoid, avoid, avoid because those often are loaded with added sugar, sugar goes right to your blood stream so can spike blood sugar levels
If it takes 3 oranges to make a cup of juice that is pretty quick and easy to drink but can you sit and eat 3 oranges? Not really without getting a stomach ache. So better to have the fruit because it has all of the soluble and insoluble fiber.
Grow your own fruit. Idealistic? Maybe. Worth it – absolutely. There are so many ways to get fruit growing even if you are limited in garden space or time. Many fruit trees can be espaliered if you have wall space. Lemon trees can grow in a container. Strawberries are really easy to grow, in most places and there really is nothing as great as eating a sun kissed uber ripe strawberry right out of the garden. I get excited just thinking about how I have tended our patch and watch daily as they put out the blooms.
Frozen, dried and jarred fruit like jam and compotes are great ways to enjoy fruit too. Eating a variety of fruit will supply the most colors that contain really powerful health promoting nutrients- called phytonutrients and antioxidants. These powerful chemicals keep you healthy and will help you resist colds, flu’s and cancers. Antioxidants also help decrease the risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke by lowering blood pressure, lowering cholesterol, helping with hormone balance, and reducing inflammation. Fruit also provides fiber that aids digestion reducing the possibility of intestinal problems.
Serving recommendation
1 medium apple, orange banana
¼ cup dried fruit (raisins, apricots, mango)
½ cup chopped fruit raw or cooked
¾ cup fruit juice
½ cup frozen
- Apples
- Apricot
- Banana
- Blueberry
- Cantaloup
- Cherries
- Grapes
- Grapefruit
- honeydew
- Kiwi
- Lemon
- Mango
- Orange
- Peaches and nectarines
- Papaya
- Pineapple
- Strawberry
- Watermelon