Mango fruits can vary in shape, being anything from oval to round, or even kidney-shaped. In the United States, there are about six main varieties available. These include Haden, Keitt, Kent, and Tommy Atkins.

Native to southern and southeastern Asia, these declicious fruits are grown in India, Burma, and the Andaman Islands. India provides about seventy-five per cent of all the mangoes grown these days. Mexico and China come next as mango growers.

Full of nutrients like vitamins A and C, mangoes also have vitamin K and potassium. Not only that, there are a variety of antioxidants and carotenes in mangoes. The greener, less ripe mangoes have more vitamin C, but fully ripe mangoes have more beta-carotene. Either way you’re getting a fruit with healthy benefits.

Another great thing about mangoes is the fact they are one of the fruits considered least likely to have any harmful pesticide residue on them.

If you don’t know how to choose one of these reddish-yellowish-green fruits, don’t depend on the color to tell you if the mango is ripe. Look for a slightly soft fruit for a mango you want to eat soon. The skin should give a little when pressed, and the mango should smell sweet at the stem end of the fruit.

If you aren’t going to be eating it for a few days, pick a firm fruit. It will continue to ripen if kept at room temperature. Once it’s ripe, store it in the refrigerator. They’ll keep for about five days once refrigerated. They can also be frozen, and make a great addition to smoothies then.

Once you’re ready to eat the mango, use a paring knife to peel it. Do not eat the skin as it can make you sick! Once you’ve got it peeled, slice it, working around the large pit in the middle.
You can eat mangoes fresh, frozen, or dried. They are a tasty addition to salads, and can also be used in nectars, jams, and jellies. Mangoes make excellent desserts and grilled mangoes are a tropical treat.

Mangoes are an easy health food to add to your diet. Whatever way you decide to eat them, do NOT leave that mango behind in the grocery store!

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Mango Benefits Are Many!

An excellent source of vitamin C, lemons also contain vitamin A, folate, calcium, and potassium.  All citrus fruits are high in flavonoids, an antioxidant thought to block substances that cause cancer and heart disease. 
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Lemon Fights Cancer

If all that wasn’t enough, lemons also contain a compound called limonene which is shown to have anticancer properties in laboratory animals, so quite likely for humans also.  Test show citrus limonoids to fight cancers of the mouth, skin, lung, breast, stomach and colon.  This substance also battles human neuroblastoma tumors.  Researchers believe that limonoids may be better suited to for suppressing cancer cell growth than other nutrients because they stay in the bloodstream for a long time.
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Lemon Home Remedies

Instead of buying real lemons in your dishwashing liquid, and fake lemon juice in your food, get some real lemons or lemon juice!  Here are a few uses for lemon juice:

• Lemon Juice and honey (1/2 squeezed lemon and 1 teaspoon of honey) as a cold remedy.
• Lemon juice in hot water is widely advocated a daily natural treatment for constipation.
• Lemon removes odors from your hands.
• Lemon added to milk makes a good buttermilk substitute (1 tablespoon of lemon in one cup of milk).

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Other Lemon Tips!

Lemons will last for a week or two at room temperature.

For extended storage, keep lemons in a zip-locked bag in the crisper of the fridge for up to 6 weeks.

A lemon should be at room temperature to yield the most juice.

Roll a lemon under your palm on a hard surface to soften it before juicing and it will yield more juice.

A large lemon yields about 3 to 4 tablespoons of juice.
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Lemon Benefits Health!

Scurvy isn’t such a problem today, but miners in the California gold rush era prized them as a preventive against scurvy.  They’d pay up to one dollar per lemon, which was really expensive then!

You don’t have to spend so much for lemons today, so eat lemons and get some vitamin C and other goodies in your diet.  Remember, lemon benefits health!

Post from: Health Food Made Easy

Lemon Benefits Health

If you want an easy healthy food, you can’t go wrong with healthy bananas! They come prepackaged by Mother Nature, full of goodness like potassium. All you have to do is peel and eat.

There are actually two main types of bananas, the sweet banana, which is what we usually see in the stores and eat fresh. The other kind is the plantain banana, which is usually cooked. It is becoming more readily available in supermarkets.

Although we usually see sweet bananas with yellow skins, they do come in different colors. When ripe, they can be red, pink, black or purple.

What’s So Great About Banana Foods?

Bananas not only have a lot of potassium, they also have manganese. Besides having those minerals, they are a good source of vitamins B6 and C, plus they have a lot of fiber. This makes bananas a very healthy food indeed!

This easy healthy food is also full of antioxidants. What’s interesting is the fact that as bananas ripen, the level of antioxidants increases, so the riper the banana, the more antioxidants it has.

Choosing And Storing Bananas

What’s you best choice of bananas? Well, it depends on what you want to do with them. If you want to eat them fairly quickly, choose bananas that are completely yellow. However, if you want them to last longer, choose green bananas.

You can delay the ripening of green bananas by putting them in the refrigerator.  The peels will turn black but the flesh remains good.

On the other hand, if you want to speed up the ripening process, put the bananas in a bowl sitting in sunshine. You can also place them in a brown paper bag with a piece of apple or tomato to make them ripen faster.

Tips For Banana Foods

Besides eating bananas fresh, they can also be used for cooking and baking and combined with all kinds of other foods. They’re a great addition to smoothies, adding a fuller body and texture to the drink. And who hasn’t heard of banana bread and banana muffins? They’re great in fruit salads, slicked up over a bowl of cereal, and make a great sandwich when paired with peanut butter.

When preparing bananas for recipes, once they are peeled, it’s best to dip them in lemon, lime or orange juice to prevent them from browning if you won’t be serving them right away.

To enhance the taste and smell of bananas, try using them in a recipe that calls for them to be heated.

Healthy Bananas Can Help Sick People

If you have kids, chances are you’ve heard of the BRAT diet. If you’re unfamiliar with it, this is a diet of:

• Bananas
• Rice
• Applesauce
• Toast

These foods are considered to help when someone is suffering from diarrhea. In the past, pediatricians prescribed this diet as the only foods to give children, but nowadays they are more often just incorporated into their regular diet.

Bananas also contain the compounds called protease inhibitors, which help destroy harmful bacteria like H. pylori, which is believed to be the cause of stomach ulcers.

Cheers For Healthy Bananas!

Bananas are versatile and tasty and good for you. They may be the ultimate easy healthy food!

Post from: Health Food Made Easy

Healthy Bananas