8th October 2012
By Sayer Ji
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
Fruit is not only enjoyable to eat — as it should be, considering the very word fruit stems from the Latin word frui, meaning “to enjoy, use” — but it also nourishes and protects the body with powerful, built-in medicinal activity. Fruits are by design a “perfect food,” intended to entice animals to consume them in order to help disseminate their seeds, for instance. This means that unlike grains, and other lectin- and anti-nutrient-rich organisms, e.g. wheat, tomato, beans, we humans have chosen to make into our food, fruits are less likely to come equipped with “invisible thorns,” as they benefit as much in being eaten as we do in eating them. Also, like our now hard-wired biological dependence on obtaining vitamin C from external sources (unlike most animals we can not produce it from glucose), countless millennia of fruit consumption has left our genetic infrastructure in need of continual resupply of many of the key vitamins and phytocompounds they contain copious quantities of.
With this symbiotic relationship between fruit-bearing plant and seed-disseminating animal in mind, the following healing fruit facts won’t seem so unbelievable…
Grapefruit – Infection: The seeds of this fruit, at a dose of 5 to 6 every 8 hours for two weeks, have been shown effective in eradicating urinary tract infections, including drug-resistant strains. [i]
Pineapple – Cancer: The enzyme bromelain, extracted from pineapple, has been shown to be more potent that the chemotoxic agent 5-fluorouracil in killing cancer, in the animal model. [ii]
Watermelon – Hypertension: Watermelon contains amino acids, such as L-citrulline, which help the blood vessels dilate naturally, countermanding endothelial dysfunction and reducing blood pressure. [iii] [iv]
