Oranges, mandarins, clementines and satsumas are four citrus fruits perfect for desk-friendly office snacking.
They come in all sorts of sizes and when you break into one of those orange balls, and you find it’s seedless, you feel you’ve won the lottery. You might even crack out some PDE (a public display of emotion), smile, and do a little gig – even in the office.
“Try not thinking of peeling an orange. Try not imagining the juice running down your fingers, the soft inner part of the peel. The smell. Try and you can’t. The brain doesn’t process negatives.”
The season for these fruits is October through to April – although some varieties grow outside of those times.
But enough of that, you health fiends probably want to know exactly why we call them a super food. Well here are the key components that make the magic:
1. Vitamin C – jack of all trades, master of your immune system
Just one of these golden fruits gives you enough Vitamin C for the day. What does Vitamin C do? It enables your body to make collagen.
Know what ‘collagen’ is? Me neither – but what we’ve learnt is that that collagen makes the connective links within your body, in fact it makes up 30% of your body’s proteins. Best to gobble plenty of that up then.
2. Antioxidant Power – we’re talking Popeye strength levels here
You’re probably bombarded by foods telling you they have antioxidants in them but you may be wondering what exactly these ‘antioxidants’ actually do.
Here is your quick fire list:
• Protects your heart - by reducing cholesterol levels and other “badness”
• Protects your DNA – by reducing the chance of DNA reproduction abnormalities
• Reduces diabetes likelihood – very technical, but the things that build up to dramatically increase the chance of you getting diabetes are slain by antioxidants
• Protects your brain – by strengthening the brain proteins, preventing them from breaking down which can lead to dementia
• Protects your eyes – by preventing eye muscle degeneration
Cool huh?
3. Vitamin B6 – the daddy for Hemoglobin
Haemoglobin, the red part of your blood cells carrying your all important oxygen, is created by the vitamins from these fruits. No B6 means no haemoglobin so, and I hate to be a little grizzly, you may end up gasping for air sooner than one might like…
4. Lycopene (er, what's that?)
Lycopene sounds scientific and important because it is. It’s abundant in the pink flesh so make sure you don’t skin your fruit (although why you’d do that and create such a messy mess we have no idea).
Why is lycopene good? Well it can help reduce all manner of things such as strokes, urinary tract infections, fighting inflammation and the risk of cancer.
With that in mind I’ll be back in a sec, I can spot a clementine so I’m off to nab it…
5. Folate
If you’re in the thinking about making a bit of a life shake-up by bringing someone new into the world, you’ll want to make sure both of you have plenty of this in your system.
Not only is it a superb source of nervous system boosting health, it’s also the bees knees in preventing any mishaps during the pregnancy. Who knew that peeling fruit could be so rewarding?
As well as this healthy cocktail, the orange fruits contain potassium and limonoids and reduce your overall cholesterol levels.
So these little orange gods are pretty instrumental in your health. Not sure where to go to grab one? Whisper a couple sweet nothings in your office manager’s ear and load this website up on their monitor whilst they’re distracted by your wily charms.