How to Increase Your Daily Fruit Intake

It can be a challenge to eat healthy without having to worry about how much fruit one can squeeze into our daily diet. Fruit is important to the human diet because they contain vitamins, minerals, and enzymes that are vital to the human organs in health and maintenance. People who eat more fruit have a lower chance of dehydration, cleanse the digestive system, and those fruits high in antioxidants like guava and blueberries lower one’s chances for getting cancer. Fruit in place of those high-fat prepackaged snacks also help one to lose weight. The United States Department of Agriculture recommends an average of 2 cups of fruit daily for both women and men. Below are some suggestions for getting those required servings of fruit in your diet:

For breakfast, slice up a few strawberries or add a quarter cup of blueberries to your bran flakes.

For a mid-morning snack, eat a cup of yogurt with some fresh berries tossed in such as raspberries, blackberries, or strawberries. Grapes or pitted cherries can also be mixed with yogurt.

At lunch, eat a salad with fresh citrus fruit like sliced tangerine, grapefruit, lemons or oranges.

Make a natural fruit slushy in a blender. Suggested fruits: mango, papaya, strawberry, grape, guava. Use half a cup of sliced fruit with a quarter cup of ice, and quarter cup of water. Chill before serving.

Supper entrees do not have to be complicated if cooking with fruit. Duck a l’orange is great for a feast but simpler dishes can be quicker to make. Asian and Middle Eastern dishes utilize a wide variety of fruits. Cherry pilau is a Persian dish of sour or black cherries and rice. Orange beef or orange chicken are popular as is lemon chicken. A substitution for lemon chicken is grapefruit chicken. Baked apple slices with lamb is another great entree for the evening meal.

A mid-afternoon snack of peach, nectarine, or pear slices with a hint of cinnamon can be an energy boost to your body.

Another great breakfast idea is to serve pancakes or waffles with natural fruit puree instead of maple syrup.

Another lunch idea is to make a fruit pita sandwich. Just about anything can be used with some basic salad greens. Green leaf lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and apricot in a pita is a favorite.

Dried fruits are a wonderful snack, anytime. My favorite is pineapple chunks or slices but mango, papaya, apple slices, and pear slices are always good to munch on.

Fruit crepes can be eaten as a snack or morning meal. Sliced strawberries and bananas are great together but you can use any kind of berry or other fruit in the crepe, for example, strawberry and kiwi combined together.

Image Credit: PaulCharlesSmith, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.