Getting to the Core of Whole-Fruit Health

Reader Contribution by Dawn Combs
Published on April 1, 2015
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As part of the second year apprentice program I run at our farm we have a book club of sorts. For each month I have named a different book that I think is valuable for advanced work in clinical herbalism. Last month we read Back to Eden, Jethro Kloss’ original work detailing a lost history of early botanical medicine and home healthcare. As we talked I found myself fascinated by his insistence that people need to eat whole fruits. In today’s language most people hear that as advice to eat the apple rather than the juice or a concentrate of some sort. What Jethro meant was actually the WHOLE fruit, blossom end, core, peel, seeds and all!

The message that I remember while growing up in our food culture was that we should never, ever eat the seeds of a fruit. The message I received in my own house was that if I ever wasted the peel it would be a long time before I saw another delicious (fill in the blank with your skinned fruit of choice). So when I got married and found my husband peeling an apple in the kitchen I descended like a vengeful goddess of frugality. My children have also been forced to eat the peel with the flesh. I believe it tastes better that way.

The idea of eating the whole fruit was intriguing to me. When one of my students merely shrugged and said she always ate her apples that way I knew some research was required. The logic is there for us all to see. When you eat a strawberry or raspberry do you cut out the seeds and eat just the flesh? We know there are antioxidant benefits from eating grape seeds and there are bioflavonoids in the white pith of citrus fruits. We have quite a list of evidence that eating the whole fruit is beneficial.

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