Why have fruit for a snack?

Here are some of the phrases we hear to encourage snacking on fruit:

• Fruits help your body grow the way it should
• When you cut yourself, fruits help you heal faster
• Fruits keep your eyes, skin, bones, teeth, and hair healthy
• Fruits help you stay well since they do not contain unhealthy kinds of fat or sugar
• Fruits help your body stay in balance

These are all correct!

Fruit also gives you energy, and when you have energy, you can run and play longer and do all the other things you like to do.

Fruit comes in all sorts of colors–it’s the part you eat that matters. A banana is a great example. It is yellow on the outside, but for our bodies it is not yellow fruit. It is a white fruit because we eat the white part.

Red fruits

• Watermelon (because we eat the red part)
• Cherries
• Pink grapefruit (we eat the red part)
• Raspberries and
• Apples (as long as we eat the red skin)

Orange fruits

• Apricots
• Oranges (that one’s always a given)
• Peaches
• Cantaloupe and
• Mango

Yellow fruits

• Yellow watermelon (Yes, that’s a thing)
• Pineapple (the part we eat is yellow)
• Lemon star fruit and
• Yellow apple (as long as you eat the yellow skin)

Green fruits

• Kiwi
• Green grapes
• Limes
• Honeydew (that one is green through and
  through) and
• Green apple (is a green fruit as long as
  you eat the skin)

Blue or purple fruits

• Blueberries
• Plums (did you know when plums are dried
  they become prunes?)
• Purple grapes
• Elderberries
• Blackberries
• Raisins (dried purple grapes)

Fruit comes in all different colors. What do these colors remind you of? Yes, a rainbow!

We should be eating from all the colors in this fruit rainbow because each color helps our bodies in a different way.

The rainbow of fruit can come in different forms including fresh fruit, frozen fruit with no sugar added, dried fruit with no sugar added, and fruit canned in 100 fruit juice.

Eating from the fruit rainbow is the best way to stay healthy. The next time you feel like a snack, grab some fruit from the fruit group!