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FRESH FRUIT STOCK FOOD PHOTOS, STOCK FOOD PICTURES & FOOD PHOTO ART PRINTS

Stock photos & stock pictures gallery of Fresh fruit.

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds. Many fruits that, in a botanical sense, are true fruits are actually treated as vegetables in cooking and food preparation, because they are not particularly sweet. These culinary vegetables include cucurbits (e.g., squash, pumpkin, and cucumber), tomatoes, peas, beans, corn, eggplant, and sweet pepper. In addition, some spices, such as allspice and chilies, are fruits, botanically speaking. In contrast, occasionally a culinary “fruit” is not a true fruit in the botanical sense. For example, rhubarb is often referred to as a fruit, because it is used to make sweet desserts such as pies, though only the petiole of the rhubarb plant is edible. In the culinary sense of these words, a fruit is usually any sweet-tasting plant product, especially those associated with seed(s), a vegetable is any savoury or less sweet plant product, and a nut is any hard, oily, and shelled plant product.

Technically, a cereal grain is also a kind of fruit, a kind which is termed a caryopsis. However, the fruit wall is very thin, and is fused to the seed coat, so almost all of the edible grain is actually a seed. Therefore, cereal grains, such as corn, wheat and rice are better considered as edible seeds, although some references do list them as fruits. Edible gymnosperm seeds are often misleadingly given fruit names, e.g., pine nuts, ginkgo nuts, and juniper berries.

Fruits are generally high in fiber, water, vitamin C and sugars, although this latter varies widely from traces as in lime, to 61% of the fresh weight of the date. Fruits also contain various phytochemicals that do not yet have an RDA/RDI listing under most nutritional factsheets, and which research indicates are required for proper long-term cellular health and disease prevention. Regular consumption of fruit is associated with reduced risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease (especially coronary heart disease), stroke, Alzheimer disease, cataracts, and some of the functional declines associated with ageing.

Diets that include a sufficient amount of potassium from fruits and vegetables also help reduce the chance of developing kidney stones and may help reduce the effects of bone-loss. Fruits are also low in calories which would help lower ones calorie intake as part of a weight loss diet.

Buy all the stock photos in this gallery on line as Royalty Free or Rights managed stock photo. The stock pictures & stock images are all high resolution digital stock photos made award winning professional photographer Paul Williams.

Photo Art prints are also available to buy on line in large to small print formats for framing as art works for home, restaurant, pubs, office art , or commercial art.