Fruits

You might hear a lot of different information about the best type of food to eat and it can be quite confusing.  One of the easiest things to remember is that fruit are super foods!  They are fresh and natural, containing lots of vitamins and minerals you can’t get from other foods and best of all they taste great!

So, what is fruit made from? Most fruit are made up mostly of water (about 80%!), just like you, so it provides you with fluids you need through the day.  Most fruit has fibre, which you cannot digest but it is still very important.  Fibre helps to bulk up the food you eat and makes sure that everything moves through your digestive system at a regular pace.  If you eat a lot of processed foods, you may not be eating a lot of fibre which means that you may be constipated (you may find it difficult to have a poo) and there may be a build up of gas, which can be very smelly!  You can see why it’s a good idea for everyone to eat fresh fruit!

Fruit really is the ideal snack food.  It has lots of water, lots of vitamins and minerals, lots of fibre and hardly any calories.  You can eat it fresh or all year round if it is frozen, canned or dried and while fresh is always best, you can still get lots of benefit from prepared fruit. 

One thing to watch out for though is fruit juices or fruit that comes in any kind of syrup.  Syrup is just sugar and water so the overall goodness of the fruit may be reduced by the sugar that you eat or drink at the same time!  Remember to read the label or packaging for information on the ingredients that any prepared or processed fruit comes in!  Its still okay to eat the fruit, you still get benefits, but remember that fresh fruit is at the very bottom of the food pyramid, where the fruit wedge is at its biggest, so you can eat lots.  Fruit with sugar (in syrup, some juices, in pies or tarts) is at the top of the food pyramid, where the fruit wedge is narrow so you cannot eat lots of this kind of food.  Check out the section on the Food pyramid for more information!

Do you know that fruit are really very clever?  They use animals to spread themselves around!  Lots of animals eat fruit and they usually carry it away from where it fell to the ground or where it grew.  The seeds of fruit are usually hidden inside so when the animal eats a fruit, it carries the seeds to a new location.  The animal scatters the seeds either by dropping the seeds it doesn’t want to eat or by eating the seeds and leaving them behind in its droppings.  When the seeds get to their new location, some will have the right conditions to grow and product more fruit.  These are the ones with lots of space and lots of light, where they are not in competition with other plants.  Without the right conditions, the seeds will not grow, but fruit have so many seeds, chances are that some will survive and the cycle continues!

Fruits have lots of vitamins.  You don’t need much of these to keep you healthy but you would be very ill without them and it is best to get them from the food you eat. You cannot store a lot of these in your body so you need to eat vegetables and fruit every day to make sure you have enough to keep your body healthy and working the way it should!

Each of the vitamins you eat has a special job to do.  Check out the table (Table 1) to see which fruits have which vitamins and what they do! 

Vitamins come in two types – fat soluble and water soluble.

• Fat soluble vitamins are stored in your liver and in the fatty tissue in your body.  They just hang around until your body needs them, but for different lengths of time so you still need to replace them, just not as often.  Vitamins A, D, E & K are the fat soluble vitamins. 
• The water soluble vitamins are different – they aren’t stored in your body, they go to your bloodstream and get excreted if they are not used.  You have to replace these vitamins much more often to make sure your body has enough all of the time.  These vitamins are the ‘B group’ vitamins – B1 (thiamin); B2 (riboflavin); B6; B12, niacin; Folic acid, biotin, pantothenic acid - and Vitamin C.

Fruits have very bright colours – they are red, yellow, orange, purple…lots of different colours.  These look great and they all help you to stay healthy.  The bright colours you see in fruit are make by phyto-chemicals (‘fight-o-chemicals’).  Phytochemicals work with vitamins and minerals to keep your body healthy so remember to eat lots of colourful fruit.

There are lots of other great things in fruit that work to keep you healthy.  Red fruits like tomatoes contain lots of lycopene (‘lie-co-pene’) while orange fruits like oranges have lots of carotenoids (‘car-ot-en-oids’).  Your body makes carotenoids into vitamin A so its good to eat lots!  Fruits are also packed full of flavonoids (‘fla-van-oids’), especially citrus fruits, which help to keep your cells healthy.

	VITAMIN			WHAT IT DOES				WHERE YOU FIND IT (vegetables)
		A			Helps you to see in the dark! Helps you to see colour Keeps your teeth and gums healthy				Apricots Nectarines Tomatoes
		B1 B2 B6 B12 Niacin Folic acid Biotin Pantothenic acid			B vitamins help your body to burn up fat from the food you eat or the fat that is stored in your body – they help your body to use the food you eat to give you energy! B vitamins also help to make red blood cells that carry oxygen to all the different clls in your body – they really are very important in keeping you healthy!				Some citrus fruits like oranges
		C			Helps to heal cuts Keeps your teeth, gums and muscles healthy Helps to fight infection				Bananas Berries Citrus fruits, like lemons and oranges Strawberries Tomatoes

Did you know – the B group vitamins you find in green leafy vegetables help your body to make protein and give you energy?

Can you see how important green leafy vegetables are in your diet?