Cherries

native to: Eastern Europe and Asia Minor
in season here: June

While we're on the subject of fruit, let's take a look at another harbinger of summer. Cherries are drupes, fruit with stones or pits rather than seeds, and are related to other small tree fruits such as plums, peaches, and apricots.

Cherries are rich in anthocyanin glycosides, which act as anti-inflammatories against things like gout, arthritis, fibromyalgia, and even sports injuries. Research on tart cherries has shown them to be useful against cancers, aging and neurological diseases, and pre-diabetes.

Then there's the vitamin C that we tend to expect from fruit -- a cup of raw sweet cherries will give you 10.8 mg of the stuff, as well as some beta-carotene and vitamins K, B-6, and A. There's also a pretty good dose of potassium in there, along with some copper, manganese, magnesium, iron, calcium, phosphorus, and zinc. They also contain phytosterols, which help lower "bad" cholesterol.

Cherries are one of the very few food sources of melatonin, which is calming and useful against nervous disorders, insomnia, and our old friend the tension headache.

Read more:
Label-style nutrition information for sweet cherries
Label-style nutrition information for tart (pie) cherries
nutrition-and-you.com

Versión en español: this post is also available in Spanish
Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.