Kiwi--the magical fruit!

Yesterday we made our monthly visit to Trader Joe's for Briggy's organic extravaganza. We get loads of fruits and veggies (and flax seed) to gear up for the next month of purees. His new 8 month foods include: kiwi, white potatoes, broccoli and flaxseed. We also picked up a ton of pears, sweet potatoes, avocados, apples, bananas and carrots. I was excited to find out this information about kiwi (i hope briggy likes it!)


The Rutgers study found **kiwifruit to be the most nutrient dense of 27 of the most popular fruits, followed by, papaya, cantaloupe and strawberry. On the basis of cost in calories per nutrient, kiwifruit has the 5th lowest caloric cost behind lemon and strawberry, cantaloupe and papaya. Also in terms of CPN, kiwifruit shares a top rating for low-sodium, high-potassium fruit with papaya, apricot and banana.

On an individual food basis, kiwifruit had the highest density for vitamin C; whereas avocado, kiwi and banana led for magnesium compared to other fruits. Avocado, banana and kiwifruit are leading sources for potassium. Kiwifruit was also found to be one of the few low-fat sources of vitamin E.

CONCLUSION:

Fruits are important sources of many nutrients and also contain many other elements that may be important factors in disease risk reduction. The strength of the evidence relating increased fruit and vegetable intake to reduced levels of cancer and heart diseases is compelling enough to encourage consumption. Recommendations to patients, clients and the general public for increasing fruit consumption should stress the importance of a variety of fruit choices and suggest inclusion of lesser-known but nutritionally dense fruits, such as kiwifruit.