Skip to main content

The 11 Healthiest Fruits You Can Eat Right Now

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Gorging on hotdogs and ice cream is fun. But we should not forget to spruce up our diet with healthier options, like fresh fruits. No one fruit will provide all of the nutrition that a person needs in a day. In fact, vegetables are typically more nutrient-rich and lower in sugar than fruit. However, some nutrients, like Vitamin C, are found in higher levels in the latter than the former.

Using the USDA’s FoodData Central as our main source, we researched the nutrient makeup of many popular fruits across the globe to bring you our roundup of the healthiest fruits for this season and beyond. Once you purchased these fruits, you can use them as ingredients for concocting creamy milkshakes or smoothies.

Related Guides

Guava

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Guava is a superfood. It contains massive amounts of lycopene, and is also rich in potassium, phosphorus, vitamin C, folate, beta-carotene, and even has trace amounts of B-vitamins, which is rare for a fruit. Guava is high in fiber and moderately low in sugar, making this a good fruit to include in your daily diet! Lycopene has been studied more closely over the last 20 years and is now recognized as one of the most powerful carotenoids for its anti-oxidative benefits.

Tomato

Image used with permission by copyright holder

To answer the age-old question, tomato is a fruit! And a quite nutritious one at that. Tomato is also known for being rich in lycopene. This is where it gets its red color. Tomatoes also contain choline, vitamin E, vitamin K, niacin, vitamin A, beta carotene, alpha-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin, making the tomato a highly nutritious fruit to include in your diet. Choline is typically found in animal proteins and is important for the nervous system and muscular control.

Choline may be harder for vegans to get in their diets, making tomato a great fruit to include in a vegan or vegetarian diet. The latter nutrients (Vitamin A, beta carotene, alpha-carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin) are mostly carotenoids that are essential for eye health and your immune system, and are also important for anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-carcinogenic properties.

Read more: Heirloom Tomato Guide

Papaya

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Papaya is another superfood containing large amounts of lycopene, beta-cryptoxanthin, lutein, zeaxanthin, vitamin C, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and small amounts of niacin and vitamin B6. As you can see, Papaya is a nutrient-rich food to include in your diet. It is hard to get B vitamins like niacin and vitamin B6 from sources outside of animal proteins, which makes papaya another good nutrient-dense fruit for vegans and vegetarians.

Grapefruit

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Grapefruit is another underrated fruit for eye health (beta-carotene, vitamin A) and nutrients found in animal products (choline, vitamin B6, calcium, phosphorus), and not just vitamin C like most citrus fruits are known for. Beyond its health benefits, it makes for a great citrus-based cocktail.

Mangoes

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Mangoes are high in sugar (100 grams of mango contains 14 grams of sugar), but are very rich in nutrients. Half a cup of mango will give you a healthy serving of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, copper, selenium, vitamin C, niacin, vitamin B-6, folate, choline, vitamin A, beta-carotene, and even vitamin E. Many of these nutrients are commonly found in animal proteins or nuts, making mango a great part of a vegan or vegetarian diet.

Watermelon

a

Watermelon is an underrated fruit. While it doesn’t have a wide range of different nutrients, it is an excellent source of lycopene. A two-thirds of a cup serving of watermelon provides 4,500 micrograms of lycopene, which is more than most other lycopene-rich fruits and vegetables, like tomatoes. Watermelon is also a healthy source of vitamin B-6, beta carotene, vitamin A, and potassium. It is also pretty low in sugar, making it a healthy fruit to consume!

Peaches

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Peaches are another underrated fruit, but these are one of the most nutrient-rich foods that grow across the continental United States. Peaches are a good source of selenium, copper, phosphorus, niacin, vitamin A, beta carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin, and vitamin E. If you grab peaches and want to preserve them, make sure to freeze your peaches.

Oranges

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Fresh orange juice is great to start your morning. Oranges are known for their vitamin C, but they are actually rich in a lot of other nutrients besides vitamin C. Eat oranges for calcium, potassium, copper, selenium, vitamin B-6, folate, choline, lutein, and zeaxanthin.

Nectarines

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Nectarines are nutritionally similar to their cousins, the peaches. Nectarines are also grown across the continental United States. They also contain lots of phosphorus, potassium, copper, zinc, niacin, lutein, zeaxanthin, and vitamin E.

Kiwi

Fotonium/Shutterstock

Kiwi is not as much of a “superfood” as some of the other fruits listed here. However, kiwi contains plenty of nutrients. It is rich in calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, copper, vitamin C, niacin, vitamin B-6, folate, choline, lutein, zeaxanthin, vitamin E, and vitamin K. Vitamin K is popularly found in green leafy vegetables, but can also be taken in from this healthy fruit!

Durian

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Durian tastes a little bit like jackfruit, and like jackfruit, it has been popularly eaten as a meat substitute at vegan restaurants across the United States for the past several years. Interestingly, even though it is a fruit, durian is rich in protein, fat, and carbohydrates, making it nutritionally dissimilar from other fruits. It is rich in nutrients like magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, copper, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate, beta carotene, and alpha-carotene. The B vitamins mentioned (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and folate) and the minerals magnesium, phosphorus, and copper are hard to get in a vegetarian diet, so this is a good fruit to consume if your diet is low in meat and animal products!

Editors' Recommendations

Sheena Pradhan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Sheena Pradhan is a serial entrepreneur and digital marketer. She started her career as a Registered Dietitian and…
8 incredible ways you can benefit from cinnamon
Cinnamon doesn't just add flavor to meals — here's why it's great for you, too
Ground cinnamon and cinnamon sticks.

Unfortunately, the foods that are really good for you are not often considered the most delicious. On the other hand, the foods that we consider to be the tastiest are often loaded with sugar and fat. While very few people would argue against the fact that broccoli has a preferable nutritional profile compared to Oreo cookies, there are still foods out there that taste great and provide many perks. There are numerous benefits of cinnamon, for example.
Fortunately, there are plenty of delicious foods that are packed with health benefits, including spices and seasonings like garlic, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon. We often think of cinnamon as simply a flavorful accent to sweets like apple pie, spice cookies, and oatmeal, but cinnamon does more than just bring a scrumptious taste and aroma to your food. Keep reading to learn about the benefits of cinnamon.

What is cinnamon?
 
Cinnamon is a culinary spice made from the inner bark of cinnamon trees. After the cinnamon trees are cut down, the inner bark is harvested by stripping off the outer bark. The inner bark is then dried. As it dries, the bark curls into “cinnamon sticks,” which are rolls of the inner bark.
Cinnamon sticks are used to flavor things like tea and mulled cider and then are removed before eating. Ground cinnamon is made by crushing and grinding the cinnamon sticks.
There are two primary types of cinnamon: Cassia cinnamon and Ceylon cinnamon. Most cinnamon on grocery store shelves is Cassia, but Ceylon is known as true cinnamon, and it has a lighter and more mild taste but far more health and medicinal benefits. In fact, high doses of Cassia cinnamon can actually be toxic because it contains coumarin. If you have a bleeding disorder, you should consult your physician before consuming cinnamon in excess.
Moreover, to take advantage of the benefits of cinnamon, use Ceylon cinnamon.

Read more
How much protein do you really need? Here’s how to calculate it
Whether you're building muscle or just getting your daily energy needs, here's how much protein you should eat
Making a protein shake

If you were to survey people about the most important macronutrient, you will likely find that most people will answer protein. Although there are important benefits of all three macronutrients — protein, carbohydrates, and fats — and some unique functions of each, protein certainly plays numerous physiological roles that neither fats nor carbohydrates can replicate. 
For this reason, it's important that your diet contains enough proteins for your body size and activity level, but how much protein do you really need? How do you calculate your protein requirements? In this article, we will briefly discuss protein's many roles in the body, daily protein recommendations for adults, and how to calculate how much protein you need to eat in a day.

Why is it important to eat protein?

Read more
Save time and eat smart: 9 of the healthiest microwavable meals in 2023
Keep your freezer stocked with these healthy meals; You never know when you may be stuck at home again
healthiest microwavable meals orange mango chicken

If Covid taught us anything, it's that what was once a thoughtless, easy thing like a trip to the grocery store can quickly, and without much warning, become a difficult task. Without sounding too paranoid, it's important to make sure we're prepared for a lengthy stay at home, for any number of reasons. A Covid resurgence, a zombie apocalypse, you name it. One of those preparations should be ensuring we have enough room in our freezers for a hearty supply of frozen foods.

You've probably noticed that food companies have really upped their game in the last few years. If you've had the chance to sample some frozen meals, you might have noticed that some of them actually look like their picture on the box. It's shocking because TV dinners were the original catfishers with their profile pics, long before that dating app you're using took the idea and ran with it.

Read more