Getting a full understanding of lychee fruit nutritional value should start with the origin of lychee fruit.

Originally only native to evergreen trees in China and the Asian region, the lychee, or litchus, the fruit has spread its growing region to Hawaii, Florida and California in the 1800s. Red, or in some cases a lighter pink colour, the heart-shaped lychee fruit has an inedible, hard outer shell. Inside this shell is a whitish, fleshy, sweet and juicy pulp that contains hard brown pits.

While the lychee fruit is not as common as certain types of berries or bananas, the health benefits of lychee fruit are significant. If the health benefits were not enough, the simply nutritional value of eating lychee fruit makes it worth understanding what they are and seeking out a way to add this powerful fruit to your daily diet.

Even though lychee fruit is small it packs a large punch when it comes to its vitamin content. Lychee is an excellent source of necessary vitamins required for good health. The main vitamin that lychee fruit provides is vitamin C. Based on information from the USDA Nutritional Database, 136 mg of vitamin C is contained from just a 1-cup serving of lychee fruit. That is 226 percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin C. In comparison, oranges in which everyone relates to their prime source of vitamin C contains only 95.8 mg or 160 percent of the recommended intake of vitamin C in a 1-cup serving.

With vitamin C known to help to boost immune system defences, lychee provides an additional 40.2 mg more vitamin C than oranges, making sure your immune system has all the vitamin C it needs to fight off disease and keep you healthy.

That is not all the lychee fruit does. Vitamin C is also known to help maintain healthy skin, tissues and bones. Other vitamins in lychee fruit, although much fewer amounts include the B family of vitamins; vitamin B2 or riboflavin and vitamin B6. There are also small traces of vitamins E and K in lychee.

Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells and to remain healthy, our cells must function properly. Required minerals are necessary for the proper functioning of our cells. While only small amounts are necessary, if our bodies are deficient in even one of the minerals, there could be serious health consequences.

The mineral content in lychee fruit is fantastic. Lychee provides many of the essential minerals needed for healthy cell production; from 0.3 mg of copper which is 14 percent of the recommended intake, to 1.9 mg of sodium, a mere trace. In between these ranges, lychee provides potassium, phosphorous, manganese, iron, magnesium, selenium and zinc.

When people discuss fiber, the first thing that comes to mind is digestive health. While this is true, having adequate amounts of fiber in your diet also will help to support healthy cholesterol and promote a healthy cardiovascular system.*

In a 1-cup serving of lychee fruit, there is 2.5 g of fiber. While this may not seem like a substantial amount, it is actually 10 percent of the recommended daily intake. Adding this to your diet can greatly increase your dietary fiber intake.

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Lychee fruit contains high amounts of an antioxidant compound called polyphenol. Polyphenols are natural compounds found in plants and have many health and nutritional benefits. The polyphenols contained within lychee fruit have been found to support healthy weight management and promote healthy liver function that can be affected by Type 2 diabetes.*

Based on a study from Kyorin University in Japan, published in the March 2011 issue of “Phytotherapy Research,” explains and outlines that the right combination of polyphenols from the lychee fruit breaks down and release stored fat cells even better then EGCG, a popular polyphenol found in green tea.

From the April 2011 issue of the “The British Journal of Nutrition“, it states that the same polyphenol mixture found in lychee fruit, known as oligonol, acts as an antioxidant by protecting the cells in our body from the inflammatory process caused by free radicals. It also prevents excess fatty deposit build-up in our liver.*

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.