Fruits are the Yummy Treat that Gives Back

Most people, adults and children, enjoy the tastes of many fruits. These natural snacks are tasty, sweet and part of good health nutrition. Yet, when given the choice between a ripe, red apple and a gooey chocolate chip cookie, most of us would choose the cookie, which adds nothing but calories to our health nutrition. To ensure that you and your family get all of the health nutrition that fruits can provide, it is important to understand the role that fruits play in health nutrition and some tips for ensuring that your family makes the healthful choice, at least more often than not.

Highlights of Healthful Fruits

Most fruits are full of vitamins and nutrients that are vital to our health nutrition. Sure, fruits do contain fructose, a type of sugar, which is why they are sometimes limited in low carbohydrate diets, but they are not nearly as full of sugar as processed sweet treats and they make up for it with fiber, vitamin C, beta carotene and phytonutrients, all of which are invaluable to our human health nutrition.

Some of the best fruits for you are those with dark blue, red or purple skins, including red grapes, blueberries and pomegranate. The chemicals that make these fruits red also carry high levels of antioxidants, which help to keep us feeling and looking younger, inside and out. Citrus fruits are particularly good for their high levels of vitamin C, which helps boost the human immune system. Other excellent additions to your health nutrition diet include papaya, guava, cantaloupe, mangos, kiwi and strawberries. 

Ensuring Fruits are a Good Part of Your Family’s Day

Usually, it is not difficult to get a person to eat fruit; most of us enjoy the sweet flavor and juiciness. However, in our modern society it is easy to be tempted into more indulgent sweets, such as cakes, sugar candies and chocolate. Getting your family to eat fruit is mostly about making it convenient. In short, keep the house stocked with plenty of ready to eat fruit. Keep bananas on the counter, apples washed and cool in the fridge, melon cut into bite sized bites on the dinner table. If it is easier to grab an apple than it is to snag a cookie, you stand a much better chance of your family making the choice that is right for their health nutrition, rather than caving to the modern sweet tooth.

It is important to note that while fruit juice tastes good, and certainly is better than the empty calories of soda pop and sugar drinks, eating the actual fruit is still better. The substance of a fruit contains more vitamins as well as fiber, making it significantly more beneficial to health nutrition than the juice alone. An occasional glass of juice is fine, but do not think of juice as a replacement for whole fruit.