by Stephanie Briggs

Created on: February 20, 2009

Close your eyes and imagine standing in the middle of a peach orchard on a hot August day. Can you smell the tree-ripened fruit? Don't you want to pick one and savor its sweet, juicy, fragrant goodness? The pleasures of sweetness, flavor, fragrance, and texture are reasons enough to eat fruit. But besides those inviting wonders, fruits offer us many compounds of great benefit to our health.

We all know they provide vitamins and minerals, but there are many other compounds in fruit, some of which we cannot name, that give health benefits to those who consume them. We call those compounds, collectively, phytonutrients-that is, nutrients from plants ("phyto"=plant).

Many of these phytonutrients have antioxidant activity, and others may yield their benefits by different mechanisms, such as inhibiting an enzyme. In many cases, we don't know how they work.

Cherries, for example, are known to reduce uric acid levels in blood and to increase the urinary excretion of uric acid. Uric acid is what causes gout, and eating cherries, drinking cherry juice, or taking capsules of cherry extract can relieve the pain of gout. What in cherries reduces uric acid? And how does it do it? We don't yet have the answers to those questions, but while we're waiting for the answers, we can use cherries to give us relief from gout.

The fruits best known for their high antioxidant activity are berries:

* Raspberries

* Blueberries

* Strawberries

* Blackberries

* Cranberries

* Goji berries (also known as wolfberries)

But many other fruits provide high amounts of the familiar antioxidant, Vitamin C:

* Cantaloupe

* Kiwi

* Kumquat

* Citrus fruits (e.g., orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, clementine, tangerine)

Fruits, even acidic ones, have an alkalizing effect on the body: that is, they make the body less acid. Evidence is accumulating that certain disease conditions, such as osteoporosis, gout, and rheumatoid arthritis are aggravated by excess acid in the body. Eating alkalizing fruits can reduce overall acidity.

Alkalizing fruits include (but are not limited to):

* Figs

* Dates

* Black currants

* Bananas

* Apricots

* Cherries

* Grapes

* Grapefruit

* Mangos

* Pears

* Pineapple

* Lemons

* Peaches

* Apples

Many people have been advised by their doctors to eat bananas to provide potassium to make up for losses caused by potassium-depleting medications. While bananas are a good source of potassium, so are many other fruits (and vegetables). There is no need for boredom when attaining your daily 3500 milligrams of potassium. Other high-potassium fruits include avocado, grapefruit, orange, watermelon, and raisins. If you eat 3 to 5 servings of vegetables and 2 to 3 servings of fruit per day, you should have no trouble achieving adequate potassium intake.

Eating whole fruits has many advantages over drinking their juices. While nutritionists encourage eating 2 to 3 servings of fruit per day, they do not suggest 5 or 6, mainly because that could lead to excessive sugar consumption, a risk factor for diabetes and obesity. Drinking fruit juice is likely to increase the number of fruit servings consumed, since it takes, for example, three or four medium oranges to make an 8-ounce glass of juice. Juice also is devoid of fiber if the pulp is removed, whereas whole fruits can be a good source of fiber-a nutritional factor not only helpful for preventing or treating constipation but also for eliminating many unwanted compounds from the body.

So, enjoy your two or three servings of fruit daily without guilt. Delight in their deliciousness and appreciate their contributions to your health.

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