Wild plants are not always dangerous because some of them are truly healthy and beneficial for the health, like the cute and beautiful ground cherry. Although this is called ground cherry, this plant has no relation with cherry, but with tomato instead.
Has a sweet, yet tart taste, ground cherry is unique since the fruit is covered inside a papery husk. Inside the husk, ground cherry can ripe itself even when it has been harvested. Aside the good-looking appearance, there are many health benefits of ground cherry, thus you can start growing and consuming.
Ground Cherry Nutrition
So what is actually hidden inside this tiny fruit? Here is the list of ground cherry nutrition that you can reap the benefits.
- Vitamin C
Ground cherry is rich in vitamin C because it can fulfill 18% of your vitamin C daily intake in just every 100 grams. No wonder that it has sour taste like other citrus fruits. With many vitamin C 1000mg benefits for your body, now you can have one more citrus fruit to add to your vitamin C diet.
- Vitamin A
As rich as the vitamin C, vitamin A from ground cherry covers 14% of the recommended daily intake for every 100 grams. This vitamin is more than just great for the eyes, like the most people know, but this also acts as an antioxidant for your immune system.
- Dietary Fiber
You don’t need to worry about gaining weight by consuming ground cherry since it has only a single gram of fat from every 100 grams with low calories and dietary fiber keep you full. Therefore, it can prevent you from overeating.
- B-vitamins
Some types of B-vitamin such as riboflavin, thiamin and niacin are available in ground cherry and each of them has different benefits for your body health.
Ground Cherry Benefits
Based on the nutrition list above, here are some ground cherry health benefits that you can gain for your body.
- Heart Disease Prevention
Vitamin C is a good protection for your body because it helps you away from the free radicals that can damage the blood vessels. Such damage is the main cause of one of the deadly diseases, heart disease. That is why this tiny fruit is good not only from keeping the heart disease away, but also other problems related to the cardiovascular. Other reasons why it is good for the heart is because it reduces the blood pressure and keeping the LDL low while increasing the HDL.
- Cancer Treatment
There are many health benefits of ground cherry. It has been showed by some studies that consuming vitamin-C rich foods is linked to the cancer treatment including lung cancer, stomach cancer, colon cancer and mouth cancer. Not only ground cherry, one of the health benefits of soursop leaves is as cancer prevention too, so what about adding it to your list as well?Â
- Oxidative Damage Protection
Since vitamin C is an antioxidant, like has been mentioned above, it can help you protected from the free radicals that cause oxidative damage. This is also why it can prevent you from some related diseases like stroke and cancer.
- Bone Density Maintenance
Another effect of oxidative stress from free radicals is the loss of the bone density. Especially for women, bone density can lead to osteoporosis when they are aging. Consuming vitamin C helps you maintain the bone density so you can stay healthy.
- Muscle Tissue Damage Prevention
Still related with its benefit in maintaining the bone density, vitamin C is also great for preventing soreness and damage in the muscle tissue after doing exercises. It is normal when you experience muscle aches after exercising, but you can reduce it by consuming ground cherry regularly in the right portion.Â
- Vision Improvement
Although this vitamin A benefit has been known all over the world, at least you need to know that consuming ground cherry helps you fill your vitamin A daily requirement. The ability of vitamin A in improving the vision includes preventing blindness and dry eyes since it helps your eyes to adapt better to the darkness and light.
Moreover, it keeps the retina healthy resulting in cataract prevention. More interestingly, combined with vitamin C this vitamin can even provide better protection from cataract since the deficiency of vitamin C has been linked to it.
- Immunity Booster
Both vitamin A and vitamin C are immunity boosters. They can aid the body fight infections while enhancing the white blood cells’ activities in the body. Aside from protecting your body from germs, they are also fighting them to go out once they enter it. Double vitamins providing double protections gained from a tiny fruit are an amazing fact.
- Muscle Growth
If you have teens and children, encourage them to eat ground cherry because its vitamin A ensures their muscles properly grow. Moreover, it also helps keep the bones in their shapes.
- Low cholesterol
High level of cholesterols have been linked to several severe diseases like stroke, but the good news is the combination of vitamin C and vitamin A from ground cherry can keep the body cholesterol low. If you like, you may combine ground cherry with octopus by creating a unique dish because health benefits octopus for cholesterol include keeping your heart healthy.
- Scurvy Prevention
Scurvy is a condition where your body experiences vitamin C deficiency, which results in weakness. The signs can be seen from your hair become curly, the limbs sore and the body exhausted. This condition can be treated by consuming vitamin C regularly for a certain period of time to get your body back to its health.
- Cold Treatment
Cold and cough are signs that your immune system starts weakening, so when it happens you can consume vitamin C as the natural treatment. It improves the immune system and helps your body recover faster. At the same time, it improves your body’s iron absorption and infection resistance, which also do the job.
- Infection Resistance
More explanation about the infection resistance from consuming ground cherry is not just because it has vitamin C, but also the vitamin A contained. It enhances the creation of the white blood cells that keeps harmful microorganisms away. You can get your body supplied with ground cherry when you get cold because it has the two great vitamins to help you recover.
- Wounds Repair
One of vitamin C benefits you can gain from ground cherry is getting wounds repaired better. By promoting the growth of the connective tissues, vitamin C is good for repairing wounds. You can consume some ground cherries to help your wounds healed faster from the inside.
- Diabetes Treatment
Vitamin C is helpful in treating diabetes because it promotes the glucose and insulin processed. This is why some studies showed the connection between vitamin C deficiencies with diabetes.
- Urinary Stones Prevention
Vitamin A has calcium phosphate formation that contributes in preventing urinary stones. By keeping the urinary tract lining in its shape, vitamin A in ground cherry reduces the risk of stones formed in the tract.
- Alzheimer Disease Protection
Consuming ground cherry may help you away from Alzheimer disease since it contains vitamin C. Studies showed that consuming more than 500 mg of vitamin C combined with vitamin E can lower the risk. You can actually have other vitamin-C-rich-fruits, but including it into your list is great. Well, that’s all about health benefits of ground cherry.Â
Cautions of Ground Cherry
Ground cherry is indeed great and amazing, packed with many nutrients. However, there are still some things to put into account before consumption to prevent some unwanted conditions.
- Poison
It is recommended that you eat the ripped ground cherries because the unripe ones are said to be poisonous. Some studies and reports showed that some bad conditions can happen from the consumption of unripe ground cherries. So you must pay it to attention to always let them ripen before eating.
- Allergies
Although this condition is rarely found, those who are allergic to berries may have to avoid this fruit too. You should also put this fruit out of your diet list if you can’t tolerate vitamin C just in case it leads to some allergy symptoms.
You can consume ground cherry in many different ways: eat it as fruit, make it into jam. Jelly or pie and add it into desserts. Mixing it with honey can be delicious and amazing for your health since one of the benefits of honey for your healthy heart is to keep the cholesterol low. Just explore your ingredients to make great dishes. They probably make a great dessert.
Just remember that anything can’t be consumed too much no matter how great and nutritious they are. You just need to eat it in the right portion to get the benefits without having to experience the side effects.