Vitamin C Foods: Good Choices for Your Healthy Lifestyle

Vitamin C Foods:  Good Choices for Your Healthy Lifestyle
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Vitamin C Foods: Good for Your Health

Vitamin C is an important nutrient. It helps every part of your body grow and repair itself, helps you absorb iron from the food you eat, helps keep your metabolism humming (Ref 1), and may even help reduce the amount of time it takes to recover from minor illnesses, such as colds and the flu (Ref 2). Your body cannot store up Vitamin C for later use, so you must make sure to get enough on a regular basis (Ref 1). Fortunately, it isn’t hard to get enough vitamin C. This vitamin is in everyday fruits and vegetables, as well as in some exotic foods that you can use to add variety to your healthy meal plan.

Everyday Fruits

Everyday fruits and fruit juices, the kind you can easily find in any grocery store, are good sources of vitamin C. Consider foods such as orange juice, whole oranges, grapefruit, strawberries, and watermelon. A single 1-cup serving of orange juice provides 207 percent of the daily value for vitamin C. A whole orange provides 116 percent of the daily value, a grapefruit half provides 73 percent, a cup of strawberries has 114 percent, and a slice of watermelon has 20 percent. Red fruits such as strawberries and grapefruit also have lycopene, an antioxidant that helps keep your eyes healthy (Ref 2). Just be careful with grapefruit if you take prescription medications; it can interact with some drugs (Ref 3).

Everyday Vegetables

Though people don’t often think of vegetables as being good sources of vitamin C, many are. Consider red bell peppers, tomatoes, kohlrabi, broccoli, and B****russels sprouts. Red bell peppers, also called sweet red peppers, are one of the best sources of vitamin C, with a single pepper offering 380 percent of the daily value. Though tomatoes are technically fruits, most people consider them vegetables; one medium tomato provides 26 percent of the daily value. A cup of kohlrabi has 140 percent of the daily value, a cup of broccoli has 135 percent, and a cup of Brussels sprouts has 125 percent. Green vegetables, such as kohlrabi, also provide valuable B vitamins (Ref 2).

Exotic Fruits

If you’re in the mood to try some new, perhaps more exotic fruits, consider guava, papaya, kiwi, mango, or the slightly more familiar pineapple. 1 cup of guava has a whopping 342 percent of the daily value of vitamin C, while papaya has 156 percent, kiwi offers 118 percent, mangos offer 76 percent, and pineapple has 94 percent. Also, raw pineapple contains enzymes that can help improve your digestion (Ref 2).

As you can see, vitamin C foods are common, good tasting, and so good for your health. Try some and see how it does a body good!

References

All nutrition information comes from the Fat Secret website. https://www.fatsecret.com/