The 19 Fruits In Mona Vie |
The Acai Berry
With 10
times the antioxidants of grapes and twice the antioxidants of blueberries,
the Brazilian Acai berry (AH-sci-EE) is considered to have the best nutritional
value of any fruit on earth. With the symmetry of a grape and the size
of a giant blueberry, the Acai fruit tastes a bit like wild raspberry
with a hint of grape. Most people have trouble putting their finger on
the taste because it's so different.
The Acai Berry is a dense source of a particular class of flavonoids
called anthocyanins. Acai Berry's ORAC value (a measure of its antioxidant
properties), is higher than any other edible berry on the planet.
The Acai Palm is a tall slender South American (concentrated in Brazil,
Guyana, Suriname) palm grown for its fruit as well as for the "cabbage"
(the cluster of new leaves more commonly called the "heart of palm").
It prefers swampy areas, and grows quickly. The fronds were (and still
are) used for thatching and weaving. Each Acai palm tree produces small
deep purple, almost black, fruit (berries) in groups of 3-8 per bunch.
The fruit is edible, and its pulp is used in wines, liqueurs, as flavoring,
as colorant, and on its own as a juice. |
Pomegranate
Pomegranate
fruit is native from Iran to the Himalayas in northern India and was cultivated
and naturalized over the whole Mediterranean region since ancient times.
It is widely cultivated throughout India and the drier parts of southeast
Asia, Malaya, the East Indies and tropical Africa.
The tree was introduced into California by Spanish settlers in 1769.
In this country it is grown for its fruits mainly in the drier parts of
California and Arizona.
The pomegranate is one of the oldest fruits as well as richest in history
and folklore. Once you get past the multitude of seeds, its juice is tangy,
sweet, rich and flavorful. This juice becomes the base for sauces and
flavorings for drinks, savory dishes, and sweets, while the whole seeds
are a simple delight eaten fresh or used as a colorful accent as a garnish.
The fruit is about the size of an orange. The rind color can range from
yellow-orange to deep reddish-purple.
Pomegranates contain polyphenols, tannins and anthocyanins.
Extra Information:
Every pomegranate is composed of many seeds, each surrounded by a sac
of sweet-tart juice contained by a thin skin. The seeds are compacted
in a layer resembling honeycomb around the core. The layers of seeds are
separated by paper-thin white membranes which are bitter to the tongue.
The inner membranes and rind are not generally eaten due to high tannic
acid content, but they are useful as a skin wash.
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Bilberry
Bilberry
is a shrubby perennial that grows mostly in the forests of Europe. The
active constituents that comprise this herbal extract are called anthocyanosides,
which are flavonoids that harbor powerful antioxidant properties.
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Passion Fruit
An egg-shaped
tropical fruit that is also called a purple granadilla, the passion fruit
has a brittle, wrinkled purple-brown rind enclosing flesh-covered seeds,
something like a pomegranate (granadilla means "little pomegranate"
in Spanish). The seeds are edible so you can eat the orange pulp straight
from the shell. Passion fruit is more commonly sieved and its highly aromatic
pulp and juice are used as a flavoring for beverages and sauces.
Native to Brazil, passion fruits are grown in Hawaii, Florida, and California.
These crops, along with imports from New Zealand, keep passion fruit on
the market all year.
Passion fruit is a good source of vitamins A and C, as well as potassium
and iron. |
Wolfberry
Wolfberry
(a member of Solanacea family) is a wild bush found in the north west
of China. Because of its nutrient value and pleasant taste, Chinese people
have been growing this herb for hundreds of years.
Wolfberry can tolerate temperatures from -27°C to 39°C. It blooms between
April and October and harvest is from June to October depending on the
weather and growing areas. When ready for harvest, the fruit turns red,
is nearly oblong in shape and juicy. Fullness, redness and sweet taste
demonstrates the best quality of the fruit. |
Blueberry
Blueberries
are not only a powerful antioxidant but also high in compounds called
anthocyanosides.
There are types of blueberries and the most potent ones are Bilberries,
as they have the virtuous pigment in their flesh as well as in their skin,
thus they pack a greater anthocyanin wallop.
Wild blueberries are also high on the list because they contain less
water. All blueberries are very rich with antioxidants.
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Kiwi
Kiwifruit emerged
from our food ranking system as an excellent source of vitamin C. This
nutrient is the primary water-soluble antioxidant in the body. Kiwi fruit
is an excellent source of vitamin C, and polyphenols, and a good source
of vitamin E, magnesium, potassium, and copper.
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Cranberry
Cranberry
is a relatively small, red berry, which grows on low-hanging vines in
temperate zones in many regions of the United States and other parts of
the world. Cranberry can be taken as a juice or the whole berry or from
an extract of these.
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Apricot
An excellent
source of beta-carotene (Vitamin A), apricots also provide Vitamin C,
iron, potassium, and fiber among other nutrients. Apricots are versatile
and mildly sweet, making them a smart choice for adding important vitamins
and extra flavor to a healthy diet.
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Prune
By definition,
a prune is a dried plum. All prunes are plums, but not all plums are prunes.
Prune plum varieties can be dried without fermenting while still containing
the pits. This is not true of all varieties of plums.
The California prune is an offshoot of La Petite d'Agen, a prune plum
native of Southwest France. Traditionally the fruit was harvested and
sun dried.
Today, most of the prunes out on the market are dried through natural
gas heated dehydrators. The typical modern process is to harvest the fruit,
wash and dehydrate. The fruit is then graded for size and sorted. The
fruit is then stored in wooden bins until further processed. Fruit at
this stage is referred to in the prune industry as "Natural Condition
Fruit".
How did they come to be? It is believed that the ancient peoples of the
Middle East were the first to dry plums to make prunes. Prunes have been
prepared for centuries in France, and the prunes from the region around
Agen are still considered by many to be the best in the world. The original
prune graft stock was brought to California in 1856 by Louis Pellier a
French nurseryman who came to California in 1848 in search of gold. By
1900 prune orchards covered approximately 90,000 acres. Today, there are
more than 75,000 "high production" acres concentrated in the
Sacramento, Santa Clara, Sonoma, Napa and San Joaquin Valleys. These acres
produce approximately 99% of the United States production and an average
of 70% of the world supply. Today the D'Agen prune coming from California
is known as the California French Prune.
Prunes are especially high in antioxidant activity.
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Nashi
Nashi pears
(Pyrus pyrifolia and P. ussuriensis) are juicy round pears, shaped like
apples. Because of the resemblance, some people call them "apple
pears." They originated in East Asia where they are a popular fruit,
eaten as a thirst quencher. Nash, is a generic word for pears and European
pears are called Yonashi. The fruit are harvested in fall and nashi may
be used as an autumn kigo (or season word) in writing haiku.
Once reserved as a food to be served only to the wealthy and to Chinese
nobles, Nashi pears have been grown, cultivated, and eaten for centuries.
Little is known about their origin... it's estimated that they began appearing
at least 3,000 years ago in China.
Some varieties spread westward, and those ended up looking and tasting
more like the pears with which most people are familiar. The varieties
that spread eastward, however, took on more of an apple-like shape and
a crisper quality, and those became the Nashi pears we know today.
They were first introduced to Americans on the West Coast by Chinese
migrant workers during the 1850s. Even today, this region - California
and Oregon, in particular - remains the largest Nashi pear producing region
of our country. At first, trees were grown from seeds found in the fruit,
and their quality was widely varied. It wasn't until the early 1900s,
when pomologists began mastering crossing techniques, that reliable, high-quality
Asian pears were grown in the U.S. In the 1980s, there was a sudden increase
in demand for Asian pears brought on by the increasing population of immigrant
Americans in the U.S. and Canada.
Nashi pears are a great source of dietary fiber, and they're also very
high in potassium and other essential minerals. They contain nearly 10%
of the USRDA for Vitamin C, and a high concentration of folates, which
make up the Vitamin B complex group. |
Aronia
Aronia is
also known as the chokeberry. Aronia juice contains very high levels of
anthocyanins (source of red color) and flavonoids. Levels of anthocyanins
and flavonoids are over five times greater than those found in cranberries.
Aronia has also been reported to contain antioxidants, polyphenols, minerals
and vitamins.
Aronia (Photinia melanocarpa), is a native American bush that has been
successfully exported to Eastern Europe and is commercially grown in Denmark,
Poland, Russia and elsewhere. It produces white to pinkish-white flowers
in April through June (depends on location) and fruits in September through
November. It has glossy, pea-sized, violet-black berries harvested in
late summer. They have a strong, stable, staining natural color.
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Camu Camu
Camu-camu
is a low-growing shrub found throughout the Amazon rainforest, mainly
in swampy or flooded areas. It grows to a height of about 2-3 m and has
large, feathery leaves. It produces round, light orange-colored fruits
about the size of lemons, which contain a significant amount of vitamin
C.
Its high vitamin C content has created a demand for camu-camu fruit in
the natural products market. Some groups are now beginning to study cultivation
methods for this important new rainforest resource, which is still harvested
wild throughout the Amazon region.
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Acerola
Acerola (Malphighia
punicifolia L.) is a small tree or shrub that grows up to 5 m high in
the dry, deciduous forest. It produces an abundance of bright red fruit
1-2 cm in diameter, with several small seeds that look similar to the
European cherry. For this reason, acerola is also known as the Antilles,
Barbados, Puerto Rican, or West Indian cherry tree.
The mature fruits are juicy and soft with a pleasant, tart flavor. Acerola
can be found growing wild and under cultivation on the sandy soils throughout
northeastern Brazil. It is native to northern South America, Central America,
and Jamaica. Its cousin, M. punicifolia, is present as far north as Florida
and Texas.
In North America, acerola is used for its high content of vitamin C.
Dried acerola fruit extracts can now be found in tablet form and as an
ingredient in many over-the-counter multivitamin products in the United
States as a natural form of vitamin C. |
Banana
Bananas Contain
three natural sugars - sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fiber.
This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt.
The banana is full of proteins, and the sugar provided gives a lot of
energy to those practicing sports requiring endurance. Moreover, it contains
magnesium, selenium, iron, a lot of vitamins, and is recommended for salt-free
diets because of its low contents in sodium chloridium.
The banana plant is ...not a tree, but a giant herb of the same family
as lilies, orchids and palms. There are about 400 varieties of bananas.
The rhizome is planted and gives a first shoot 3 or 4 weeks later. After
9 to 10 months the inflorescence from the foliated circlet has a diameter
that can be as large as 7 meters. Three days after that, a bud hangs on
the plant. On the fifth day, the bud turns red and starts opening. On
the seventh day the leafs who covered it are falling down and finally
two days later you can already see the first banana hands.The trunk of
a banana plant is made of sheaths of overlapping leaves, tightly wrapped
around each other like stalks in a celery bunch.
The word banana is derivated from the Arabic meaning 'finger'.
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Pear
Pears offer
a good source of vitamin C, folate, and dietary fiber. One medium-sized
Pear contains less than 100 calories. Most of the vitamin C in Pears is
in the skin, so they should be eaten unpeeled.
Pears provide some iron and potassium. Our food ranking system also qualified
pears as a good source of vitamin C and copper. Vitamin C functions as
an antioxidant in all water-soluble areas of the body.
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Lychee
A lychee is
a rare sub tropical fruit originating in South China where the lychee
is very important in their culture and is famed as "the King of Fruits".
The lychee fruit is about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in size, oval to rounded heart
shaped and the bumpy skin is red in color. Once you peel the skin off,
the crisp juicy flesh of a lychee fruit is white or pinkish, translucent
and glossy like the consistency of a grape, but the taste is sweeter.
Lychees have a sub acid sweet taste and have a wonderful freshness to
them that is hard to describe. Lychee fruit is high in the antioxidant
Vitamin C and the essential mineral Potassium.
Lychee trees are beautiful hardwoods that grow 20 to 40 feet tall in
a primarily dome shaped habit of growth with dense, evergreen leaves.
Lychee trees are popular landscape trees in South Florida and other areas
of the southern U.S. and container, atrium or greenhouse growing of lychee
trees is becoming popular throughout the rest of the country.
Lychee trees are grown commercially in the US for the highly sought after
fruit in primarily South and Coastal Central Florida where it is warm
and there is some winter chilling, but little or no risk of hard freezes.
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White Grape
Grapes
grow in bunches (from 6 to 300) on woody, climbing vines. These fruits
come in a variety of colors, including black, blue, golden, green, red,
white, and purple.
Certain flavonoids present in the purple grape varieties possess beneficial
actions not seen in the others. V. vinifera is a deciduous climber with
several stems, tendrils, clusters of pale, green flowers, and palm-shaped
leaves. In addition to the kinds of grapes listed above, French hybrid
varieties of grapes exist that were developed mainly for wine making.
Grapes are native to southern Europe and western Asia but are cultivated
in warm temperate regions throughout the world. |
Purple Grape
Grapes
grow in bunches (from 6 to 300) on woody, climbing vines. These fruits
come in a variety of colors, including black, blue, golden, green, red,
white, and purple.
Certain flavonoids present in the purple grape varieties possess beneficial
actions not seen in the others. V. vinifera is a deciduous climber with
several stems, tendrils, clusters of pale, green flowers, and palm-shaped
leaves. In addition to the kinds of grapes listed above, French hybrid
varieties of grapes exist that were developed mainly for wine making.
Grapes are native to southern Europe and western Asia but are cultivated
in warm temperate regions throughout the world.
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