Without question, fruit has wonderful natural benefits for the human body. Fruit is packed with vitamins and fiber much like vegetables, but comes in a wide variety of sweeter, more palatable flavors.

Adding fruit to your diet is an excellent thing to do, but there are a few things that you need to keep in mind:

1. Eat fresh fruit instead of drinking fruit juice. Juice is often sweetened, but fresh fruits have natural sugars. Also, you don't receive all of the needed fiber and vitamins from fruit juice as you do from fresh fruit.

2. If you do have a craving for fruit juice, then go for fresh fruit juice instead of those that contain artificial flavors and colors. Or even better, try making your own fruit juice, taking care not to sweeten it with too many calories.

3. Choose fresh fruit over processed fruits. Again, processed and canned fruits do not have as much fiber or vitamins as fresh fruit, and processed and canned fruits are nearly always sweetened.

4. Wherever possible eating locally produced seasonal fruits and vegetable fresh from the garden or grove is preferred.

5. Fresh fruit makes the absolute perfect dessert for any meal. Throw out the cake and add a fresh fruit bowl to the dining table.

6. Fresh fruit also makes the perfect snack. It's far better to grab a banana or apple when hunger pangs strike, than a bag of greasy potato chips. Plus, fresh fruit just tastes better.

7. It's interesting to note that nature produces several varieties of fruits resembling the shapes of the organs of our body, which are useful and beneficial to that specific organ. Here are some examples:

Apricot - Brain
Mango-Papaya - Stomach
Almonds - Eyes
Apple - Heart
Grapes - Lungs
Cashew nuts - Kidney

8. Fruits and vegetables have in them a natural storage of the sun's energy. If we make a daily practice of having fresh fruit and vegetables, or one glass of real fruit juice and two or three cups of green juice of vegetables, our requirement for food will be reduced to a minimum. We will have enough energy to maintain the body in a healthy condition.

Overall, just remember that fresh fruit is better for you than canned fruit, fruit juice, processed fruit, or cooked fruit. Eat as much fresh fruit as you like.

Another benefit of adding fruit to your diet is the added water intake. Water is a simple, yet effective tool in the fight against the scale and the emergency room, and is often overlooked by most people.

But that is a whole other subject...