We know that fruits are an excellent source of fiber, vitamins and minerals. For that, it is highly recommended to include fruits in our daily diet (unless you have a medical condition that requires you to be on a special diet). What you may not know are these five facts about fruits that could very well change how you view or consume them from today onwards. Orange you excited?

Strawberry is NOT a true berry

Contrary to popular belief, the strawberry is in fact, not a berry. Having the word “berry” in its name does make it sound rather contradictory. This goes for raspberries and blackberries as well. Berries are simple fruits stemming from a single ovary flower and strawberries are not. As such, they fall under the category of “aggregate fruits”.

Guess what is a berry? A banana.

Yes, you read that correctly. A banana is a berry. This is because it fulfills the requirements of having three layers of flesh (exocarp, mesocarp and endocarp), it also has more than two seeds and comes from a flower with only one ovary.

When it comes to fruits, Oranges are not the best source of Vitamin C

On average one serving of kiwi contains 137mg of vitamin C, which is almost twice the amount of vitamin C that you get out of a medium sized orange. So the next time you are looking at consuming more vitamin C, grab a kiwi.

“The Fruit Salad Tree” can grow up to six different types of fruit all on the same tree

This sounds too good to be true but it is! According to fruitsaladtrees.com, “They are multi-grafted trees with different fruits from the same family grafted together on the one tree. All the fruits retain their own characteristics like flavour, appearance and ripening times.”

Grapefruit can be dangerous when consumed with certain medications

If you’re drinking grapefruit juice by itself, that’s fine. It only becomes dangerous if you take it with certain types of medication. Grapefruit juice hinders the CYP3A4

enzyme from working and this enzyme is what helps many medications metabolize in our bodies. This can cause adverse reactions and in some serious cases, death.

Sources:

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/bananas-are-berries-raspberries-are-not

https://www.alignintegratedhealth.com/blog/five-foods-with-more-vitamin-c-than-oranges

https://www.fruitsaladtrees.com/pages/what-is-a-fruitsaladtree

https://bestlifeonline.com/grapefruit-juice-medication-news/