For those of you who are a typical apple- and banana-eater, this is not a bashing of the enjoyment of what I will call typical fruits, but I hope that this encourages you to enjoy a variety of other great-tasting foods as well as educate you on a few foods that we sometimes think of as veggies but are actually healthy fruits.
Let’s begin with a classically mis-understood fruit:
The Tomato.
This wonderful fruit offers a low-sodium and low-saturated fat content as well as the presence of a wide variety of vitamins and minerals including vitamin A, C, and K, potassium, calcium, and manganese.
You can find all sorts of details about this fruit on the following website: Nutrition Data. Check it out! 🙂
Some classic foods that contain this fruit:
- tomato/pizza sauce and most Italian foods
- salsa, tacos, enchiladas, chili
- burgers, tossed salads
- vegetable soups
- egg dishes
One of my favorite ways to eat this fruit:
While growing up, my dad had a wonderful garden that include a good bit of cucumbers, green peppers, hot peppers, squash, beets, green beans, peas, and of course, tomatoes. My dad was a faithful gardener, so needless to say, we ended up with a lot of veggies and the garden was always an open-air market for us as we played outside during the summer. Nothing in it was off-limits, so we often spend afternoons snacking on raw vegetables or adding them as meals to our play. We quickly became creative during mealtime as well. One summer I remember having an abundance of ripe tomatoes, and Mom shared with us a creative way to eat this healthy fruit. Make a sandwich!!! Sliced up somewhat thin, we would pile the tomato on two mayonnaise-covered slices of (yes, so unhealthy) white bread. We would then sprinkle the tomatoes with salt and pepper, and wha-la! we had a wonderful, quite-summery, healthy sandwich. :) If you haven’t grown up with the taste or enjoyment of this fruit, this may seem rather unusual or just unappetizing. Again, I challenge you to step out and try a new fruit or just a new way of enjoying it.
The Mango.
I don’t remember the first time I ate this fruit. I’m pretty sure my dad brought one home one time, and I had to force myself to not eat it all. This has the most-amazing, almost-citrus taste with a much-different – much smoother – texture than an orange or even pineapple.
On a health-note, the mango is a great source of dietary fiber and vitamins A, B6, and C (75% of your daily needed value) as well as 61 mg of omega 3 fatty acids. The apparent downside would be the sugar content (24 grams) but in actuality, it has less sugar than an 8 oz glass of grape juice, so it’s not that bad. Nutrition Facts.
Some classic foods that have this fruit in them:
- chutney (an almost sweet-n-sour sauce that is used to top beef and lamb)
- daiquiris, lassies, and sangrias (often alcoholic drinks)
- sweet salsas
- chicken curry dishes
- sorbets
One of my favorite ways to eat this fruit:
I like mango-flavored food for sure, but my favorite way to eat this fruit is raw. When you buy a mango in the grocery store, you’re looking for the one that has the least bit of green on it as well as the one that is ripe and soft in the same way that a correctly ripened nectarine or peach would be. Then, I just slice it up much like the picture featured here in this article and eat away. Some people don’t like the taste of the somewhat tough and somewhat bitter skin, but I do. It balances out the sweetness of the fruit’s flesh. Mmmmhmmm.
The Avocado.
This is one of my favorite fruits of all time. It ranks up there with the mango for sure, but it is definitely not sweet like a typical apple. The taste of this fruit is quite soft and almost-bland but is can almost be characterized by a clean, fresh taste.
Avocados are extremely healthy for you. Each avocado contains about 1 gram of sugar only and are also a great source of dietary fiber, vitamins C and K, and folate. They are a wonderful way to get healthy, needed fats without the artery-clogging fat from an animal (Don’t get me wrong. I am most-definitely a carnivore. Just thought I’d share this interesting fact though). Personally, I also find the avocado also very calming for an irritated stomach. Nutrition Facts.
Some classic foods that have this fruit in them:
- guacamole, dips, and salsas
- sushi and wasabi
- gourmet salads
- dressing for topping on a fish dish
- a sliced addition to a burger
One of my favorite ways to eat this fruit:
Years ago, I knew that guacamole was made with avocados but that was about it. I bought one (grossly unripe and hard) and my guacamole was a massive fail. Years later, some friends of ours shared with me the tips of finding and choosing a ripe avocado (a ripe avocado is very soft without being bruised and the most-even the green the better), and some other friends taught me to make real guacamole that would not be lumpy. Since then, I have no liked store-bought guacamole and would much rather buy myself an avocado, scoop out the soft flesh, combine it with my favorite salsa and hot sauce, and use for dips, a great addition to my salad, and taco and/or burger toppings. However, sometimes I just want a small snack. Avocado is great for that too. Simply slice the fruit in half, keeping the pit in the side that you don’t intend on using at the moment (supposedly the pit helps prevent the flesh from going brown from exposure to the air), and use a spoon to eat the smooth and enjoyable flesh out of the skin. Note: the skin is not edible.
The Pomegranate.
This much less-common fruit is often heard-about and not often enjoyed. I say this from experience. I have enjoyed often in smoothies or juices, but hardly ever raw in form. However, I treasure those times (or was it just that one time?) that I was able to enjoy the tiny clusters of sweet and tangy juice fresh from the fruit itself.
The pomegranate is another quite-healthy fruit we just don’t appreciate as we should. Filled with 58% of our daily value of vitamin K and almost that much of our needed amount of vitamin C, this fruit also contains 45% of our daily dietary fiber as well as copper, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, folate, vitamin B6, and pantothenic acid. Nutrition Facts.
Some classic foods that have this fruit in them:
- smoothies, juices, and alcoholic beverages
- gravies, dips, relishes, and sauces
- gourmet salads
- cakes, tarts, gelatos, and cheesecakes
One of my favorite ways to eat this fruit:
I am a big fan of pomegranate juice for sure. Often, this kind of juice is mixed with cranberry juice, another tangy juice, so this is quite the wonderful combination of sweet and tangy, which offers a great way to start my day. I also like to eat this fruit raw. I have never personally purchased a pomegranate, but when I was once offered some, it was the most amazing experience. The inside flesh of a pomegranate much reminds me of a grapefruit or orange as the fruit itself is made up of a number of juice-filled clusters that burst in your mouth as you eat them. A wonderful snack indeed, they are much more tasty than they are attractive for viewing. 🙂
There are numerous other fruits that I would love to mention here, but fear boring you with my enjoyment of these healthy snacks. Some of the others I wish for both time and room to mention include the grapefruit, loquat, and coconut.
Also, a few fruits I have yet to try but desire to include the star fruit and the rambutan. Maybe I will try them and report back to you all on how they are in an upcoming Food-Filled Friday. 🙂
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Check out last-week’s Food-Filled Friday: California Rolls, Sesame Chicken, and Fried Rice and tune in next time to see what wonderful food, recipe, or restaurant that we talk about next!
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Tomato and Mango pictures taken from Stockvault.net
Pomegranate Photo Credit: Image: djcodrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net’>Image: djcodrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net’>Image: djcodrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net’>Image: djcodrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net’>djcodrin/freedigitalphotos.net
Making My Boast 
Good post…I may just add some of these to my grocery list.
On another note…you should look up Zematra.com to check into getting the WLW plugin that adds links & pictures to your blog posts. This would allow you to use other pictures without having to search for them or post long links at the bottom of your posts. I use it and LOVE it.
Thanks! 🙂
I love fresh tomatoes too. We often got tons and tons of tomatoes from our garden, but the past summer they were all destroyed by a blight.
We like to slice up the really big tomatoes and have them on tuna fish sandwiches! Just a plain tomato sandwich doesn’t sound bad either. We also sometimes make a fresh tomato-pesto-pizza in the summer, which is really, really good.
I also think mangoes are great! They must be expensive because we’ve hardly ever had them.
I haven’t had much of avocados, but I think I’d like them alright.
And pomegranate . . . I think we’ve had those before, but I can’t remember why! Maybe Dad just saw them and decided to buy them once. I can’t really remember what it was like. My dad drinks a LOT of pomegranate juice (straight pomegranate juice), but it’s for health reasons. He doesn’t really like it.
Mash fresh fruit in a blender, add 1 tablespoon of Molkosan and fill with spring water. Optimum Nutrition
I want to learn make good sauce, i like your pictures very clear. Good luck!