Eating plenty of fruits is the key to healthy living. But if you don’t know the correct way of eating fruits, you’ll hardly see its results. If you seem to be gaining weight even with different kinds of fruits in your diet, you probably haven’t understood the concept of incorporating them in the right way.
Adding fruits to your diet can bring forth unmatched positive results on your health. By eating a variety of fruits, you actually supply your body with essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals and fluids. Being on a fruit diet can brush aside health problems like constipation, diarrhoea, high cholesterol, abdominal pain, obesity-related problems and high blood sugar, while also providing the perfect detox you need on a monthly basis. In other words, the health benefits of fruits are innumerable and no proper justice can be done by enumerating them, for there’s enough possibility on your part to miss out on some important benefit.
However before including fruits in diet, you should learn more about the proper ways to do so or else you may not get the optimum benefit out of them. Fruits are rich in natural sugars, and eating the wrong fruit can actually make you pack a few pounds instead of giving you added health benefits.
Here are some tips on the best ways to eat fruits
1. Do Not Eat Fruits Indiscriminately
Learn about the fruits that can prove most beneficial for your body and eat them. The top ten most beneficial fruits for you may be listed as follows:
• apples
• apricots
• bananas
• berries (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries)
• cantaloupes
• cherries
• citrus fruits (lemons, limes, oranges and red grapefruits)
• kiwifruit
• papayas
• red and purple grapes
If you consume any of the above fruits, you will actually give a boost to your health. Most of these fruits are rich in antioxidants, flavonoids, carotenoids, folate, fibre, vitamins A, C and E, and minerals like potassium, magnesium and iron. Consumption of these fruits can do away with constipation, vision problems, respiratory problems, flagging energy, poor immunity, aches and inflammations, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and so on.
2. Consume Whole Fruit Instead of the Juice
The pulp of the fruit is necessary for you as it supplies you with all the fibre your body needs. If you must have fruit juice, at least make sure its fresh rather than canned. While drinking fruit juice, make sure to drink it in slow, small mouthfuls. This will allow the juice to mingle thoroughly with your saliva and will fetch you rewarding results.
3. It is better to Eat Raw Fruits Rather Than Cooked Fruits
Cooking destroys the nutritional value of the fruits. While eating fruit salads, remember not to add extra sugar as fruits are already high in sugars. Instead use honey as a sweetener. This will add to the salubriousness of your fruit diet.
4. Try and Eat Fruits at Breakfast on an Empty Stomach
Make sure not to consume fruits after meals. This is the most common practice in Indian households. Mom brings a platter of fruits as a sweet treat after lunch. But if you eat fruits at the end of your meal, you may get acidity or bloating problems. This is because the meal you have consumed comes in contact with the fruits you eat, the digestion procedure of the fruits is blocked by the meal and all the contents of your stomach ferment giving rise to digestive disorders. If you feel like you want to eat them after your meal only, wait for at least three to four hours for the food to settle.
5. There is a Right Time and Place to Eat Fruits
Don’t have citrus fruits at night. They may hinder your sleep by causing gastro-esophageal acid reflux. If you like to eat a fruit post dinner, have an apple. The pectin in apples will naturally aid you in sleeping soundly. Also, it is far better to eat fresh fruits rather than the tinned or frozen ones because the nutritional value of fresh fruits is much higher than frozen or tinned fruits. Try to eat fruits unpeeled as these are higher in fibre content than peeled ones.
Incorporating fruits in your diet does not merely mean cutting them up and popping them in to your mouth. To get the real value of fruits, you must master the correct way of eating them. Only then can you gain access to the secret of heath, beauty and happiness.
