How Much Fruit You Need To Be Eating Daily

The perfect amount of fruits you should eat per day

There is no activity on God’s green earth that ensures continued human existence other than eating. And on this same green earth, there’s no food that packs a bunch of nutrients and minerals to help make you fit and healthy other than fruits.

But Providence has not blessed you with a will all for nothing. Just like in all matters of life, you are at liberty to choose what to eat every time. If you have been choosing fruits, or all natural fruit beverages, as part of your meals, then you have been choosing right. And we salute your determination to choose right in this junk-saturated world. However, honesty, they say, is the best policy. So…

How often do you choose fruits?

How hard must a fruit ‘wink’ at you before your fleeting attention is caught? Does it have to be plum and inviting before you feel the need to eat it? If that’s the case, you have been missing a lot. And you have been unknowingly robbing and denying your body of the nutrients it needs for standard daily living.

You heard this before, but we think you need to hear it again: Your daily meal cannot cut it for healthy living. You need fruits, and you need them fast.

Why are fruits important in the body?

As much as they meet part of your body’s caloric needs, fruits are nature’s answer to the human body’s prayer for protection against diseases and ailments, all because of a special set of compounds known as antioxidants.

A generic term for compounds that slows down or totally halts the damaging activities of free radicals in the human body, antioxidants include acids such as alpha lipoic acid, vitamins, and various phytochemicals, amongst others. So what’s so special about them, anyway? The magic of an antioxidant lies not in the way it rolls off of the tongue when pronounced: it lies in its disarming power, an action that has a significant stake in your health.

An antioxidant disarms no other substance but a free radical. Produced by normal cell metabolism or from external factors like air pollution or medications, a free radical is simply any molecule which has one or more unpaired electrons in its outer shell. But how dangerous can a teeny-weeny molecule missing one or more unpaired molecules be?

Free radicals are very reactive because of their unpaired electrons in the outermost shell. Because of this, they are legendary electron poachers. That means a free radical has no qualms stealing one or two electrons from another molecule, killing the ‘burgled’ molecule. And this is basically what free radicals do in your body.

What an antioxidant does is to give up some of its own electrons for the free radical, thereby neutralizing it. When in excess, free radicals cause oxidative stress, a process that damages cell structures. Your body produces natural antioxidants, e.g. glutathione, and also gets antioxidant supplies from external sources, like your food and fruits.

Considering this little insight into your cell metabolic activities, fruits really are the answer to your body’s prayer for protection against diseases. So you should get a bowl of fruits right this minute and munch away like your life depends on it. Because it does, funny as that sounds.

So how much fruit do you need every day to stay healthy and fit?

That fruits lower the risks of many diseases and promote good health is clear enough from scientific evidence gathered over the years. Everyone has a favorite fruit that rocks his or her boat at all times, but one fruit does not contain all vitamins and minerals. Every fruit comes with its unique set of nutrients. The more you eat, the more nutrients you get.

In addition, you can get most of the antioxidants you need from fruits:that lowers your risk for diseases. All these nutrients and minerals, in combination with lots of fibre helps you to gradually lose weight, helping you stay youthful and slow down aging. Now is the time to enrich your life with as much fruits as you can eat. Moreso, you can get creative and have your daily intake of fruits in a richly prepared blend, which are available as 100% natural smoothies and fruit juices, which you can take with you wherever you go. There’s too much richness to be selective when it comes to daily fruit intake. Please indulge yourself to the fullest.

Author:

Seyi Obalalu