Fruit - Beneficial For Your Body
Fruit is food that grows from a flowering plant (trees, vines, bushes, and low-growing plants) and carries the seeds of its plant. Fruit provides your body with natural sugar, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and water.
In whole fruit, the natural sugar is held inside cells. (A cell is the smallest living part of any living thing.) Every plant cell has a cell wall (the outer protective layer around each individual cell). The cell walls are mostly made of fiber. When you bite and chew a piece of natural fruit, you begin to break open some of its cells. As the fruit moves through your system digesting, more cells break open gradually. The process is gradual because of the fiber from the cell walls.
The fiber in fruit slows down how quickly the sugar in fruit reaches your bloodstream. When sugar arrives slowly, your body has time to use the glucose rather than store it or possibly convert it into fat later.
In comparison, when fruit is juiced, a machine breaks open nearly all the cells at once and separates the liquid from the cell walls. The sugar and water go into a glass, but most of the fiber from the cell walls is left out as pulp. Without the fiber, the natural sugar in the juice reaches your bloodstream quickly rather than gradually. Fruit juice still provides vitamins and minerals. The whole fruit provides those same vitamins and minerals along with the fiber. Drinking three juiced oranges or eating three whole oranges is not a wrong or right choice. It is an aware choice to make.
Fiber does other things besides slowing down the absorption of sugar in your body. Fiber feeds the helpful bacteria living in your gut, keeps food moving through your intestines, and helps your body feel satisfied.
Fruit comes in many colors, and the color of a fruit is determined by the compounds inside the fruit. A compound is a substance made of two or more elements joined together. For example, water is a compound made of the elements hydrogen and oxygen.
The different compounds in fruit carry different vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Eating fruit of many colors means your body receives a wider range of nutrients than eating fruit of only one color.
Antioxidants are compounds that protect cells from damage.
Cells are made of enormous numbers of molecules working together. Molecules are held together by electrons. When a molecule loses an electron, that molecule becomes unstable and damaged. Unstable means the molecule will take an electron from the molecule next to it to replace what it lost. Damaged means the molecule has been changed and may no longer do its work. That next molecule is now unstable, and it takes an electron from the molecule after it. This continues until antioxidants stop the chain reaction.
An antioxidant is a stable compound that comes from food. When an antioxidant gives an electron to an unstable molecule, the molecule stops being unstable, but a trail of damaged molecules is left behind. The damaged molecules are repaired later, using amino acids from protein along with vitamins and minerals from other food you eat.
Your body produces unstable molecules every day: turning food into energy, using oxygen, and especially fighting an infection because your immune system uses unstable molecules on purpose to destroy bacteria.
A steady supply of antioxidants from food is required for your body. Different antioxidants work in different parts of your cells. Some antioxidants travel through the watery parts and some travel through the fatty parts.
This is why eating fruit of many colors matters. Different colors carry different antioxidants, and different antioxidants reach different places within your cells.
In many fruits, the skin holds a large amount of the fiber and antioxidants. For example, an apple eaten with the skin gives a lot more fiber than an apple eaten without the skin. When the skin of a fruit is edible, eating the skin means receiving more nutrients.
If you are increasing the nutrient dense food you eat, eating fruit is an important place to start.
Stacy 🌺
Information about how the body works in this post comes from my learning and research.
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I share my experiences and my perspective. Eating and healing look different for everyone. If you are struggling with food or your relationship with your body, please find support. You don’t have to do this alone.