Ripe Papaya: Nutrition and Health Benefits

Nutrition and health care are the backbones of good health. Good nutrition today will assure good health for the next thirty to fifty years and bad/poor nutrition today will ensure poor health with lots of diseases in next coming years of life. Therefore, readers shall focus on good nutrition by eating nutritious foods, including fruits and vegetables. Papaya fruits are grown in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. They are remarkable as functional fruits with health benefits beyond basic nutrition. The growth of the human population in the world is well documented which drives people mostly busy working more than preparing and eating functional food. Due to this fact, they changed from normal diets to junk foods/street foods. These foods contain lots of saturated fat, salt, sugar and preservatives which produce free radicals in the body. Free radicals caused damage to the cells and if not controlled may cause inflammation and degenerative diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, overweight and obesity, ageing, osteoporosis etc. Papaya fruits provide excellent dietary antioxidants (vitamin C and B-carotene) which combine with body enzymes antioxidants like superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione peroxidase to prevent or quench free radicals from the body cells. Regularly eating papaya fruits will prevent many non-communicable diseases. Apart from antioxidant properties, papaya also is the richest source of other nutrients, vitamins and minerals. Therefore, the authors recommended papaya fruits for a stronger and healthier body.