We all know how healthy fruit is – packed with vitamins, minerals, fibre. But its important to make sure your fruit intake is a balanced part of your nutrition, not elbowing other important components out of the way. And the way you eat that fruit is important too. Here’s why:

1. Fruit is full of natural sugars. Sometimes it can be surprising just how much sugar you’re getting! Ideally, restrict your total sugar intake for the day to 10% of your calories, or 25g.  Here is the sugar content of common fruits:
1. Banana: 13g sugar in one medium banana
2. Apple: 14g sugar in one medium apple
3. Strawberries: 7g sugar in one cup of strawberries
4. Oranges: 21g sugar in one medium orange
5. Grapes: 19g sugar in 22 green grapes

You can see how just two pieces of fruit is enough, even without sugar that you get from other sources during your day.

2. Be especially rigorous with monitoring your fruit intake if you tend to suffer from thrush, candida infections, or skin fungal infections (fungal infections just love to feed on sugar!)

3. Fruit is full of fibre, especially soluble fibre, which will help keep your bowels healthy and lower your cholesterol – but if you juice the fruit you’ll miss out. Fruit juice is actually a very sugary drink, without the fibre to slow down the sugar absorption. So wherever possible, choose to eat a piece of whole raw fruit rather than juicing it.

4. Eat fruit in season. We are truly blessed with the massive range of fresh fruit available to us, and it changes all year round. Even better, the fruit that’s in season will be cheaper. So don’t feel compelled to stick to the same fruit selection week in week out!

5. When eaten as a snack, add in some protein food like low fat yoghurt or raw nuts. The protein will help slow the absorption of the sugar in the fruit, giving you a steadier blood sugar level.

6. Dried fruit is really concentrated, making it too easy to eat a lot. So always eat dried fruit with other food to avoid a blood sugar ‘spike’.

7. Use your fruit before your fitness training for a carbohydrate boost. Especially important if you do your training before breakfast. After an hour’s training you will need another fruit boost.

Did you find yourself hesitating the last time you purchased some spread for your morning toast? Perhaps you were intrigued by the alternatives to jam: Fruit spreads and sugar-free jam. Are they really healthier? I'd like to help you make an informed decision next time you're standing in that aisle of the supermarket.

When making spreads labelled as 'jam', Food Standards Australia New Zealand (who set nutrition labelling regulations here in Australia) require that the jar contain no less than 40% fruit.

And if you've ever made jam at home, perhaps from a glut of plums, you know that the general proportion is one part fruit to one part jam – about 50% sugar. Some fruits require more, some less.

Manufacturers of sugar-free jams or fruit spreads often use a different kind of natural sweetener – fruit juice concentrate. Fructose-based sweeteners instead of sucrose based sweetener. Both types of sweeteners have advantages and drawbacks, but here's what you need to examine on the label to make the right choice for you:

Look at the nutrition data label, the section listing contents "per 100g". Now cast your eye down the list to 'total carbohydrates' and 'sugars'. This will give you an indication of the sweetness of what's in the jar. For example a jar of jam may say "64g sugar per 100g" – that's 64% sugar. A jar of fruit spread may say "54g sugars per 100g" – that's still 54% sugar, even though the type of sugar is different.

No matter which sweetener the maker has chosen, your body will still process that spread as 'sugar'. So the better alternative for you may be to choose the jam, sugar-free jam or fruit spread with the lowest proportion of sugar per 100g.

You might be tempted to reach for a 'sugar-free jam' or 'spreadable fruit' next time you're replenishing the pantry supply. But take a little time to read the labels so that you're fully informed about whether its worthwhile for you.

It seems that the traditional south American peoples knew a thing or two about the health benefits of chocolate (or more specifically cocoa beans).  Scientists visited the Kuna Indians living on islands off the Panama coast and noted that they suffered almost no hypertension(high blood pressure). Cocoa was a part of their daily diet. Its enough to make you reach for the chocolate right now. But when the islanders migrated to the mainland and began drinking the commercial cocoa blends their health deteriorated. Yes, there's a story behind this!

Cocoa in its natural form, and when used traditionally, is actually bitter in taste – and that's the therapeutic part of the bean. Modern processing strips away this bitterness and adds sugar to make it more palatable (but far less valuable for your health). To experience the difference, try some chocolate containing 85% cocoa, and notice how bitter it tastes compared to standard milk chocolate which might contain only 30% cocoa. Its important to know the difference, because if you try to use milk chocolate therapeutically, you're unlikely to improve your blood pressure, but your waistline will certainly get bigger!

Scientists keen to discover whether cocoa can help reduce blood pressure have done a multitude of research studies. Unfortunately most of the testing was on small sample sizes, which reduces the validity of their findings. (I'm still baffled as to why they would have difficulty in recruiting volunteers to test chocolate). Earlier this year a meta-analysis of the many studies done was published in the American Journal of Hypertension (you can read the entire paper here). They concluded that chocolate could indeed lower blood pressure, providing it was processed in a way that retained the original ingredients. That created chocolate rich in flavonols.

So it seems that eating chocolate is really good for you – providing you eat it as close as possible to the way it grows, and not in excessive quantities:

-          choose dark chocolate with 85% cocoa. If you live in the UK or western Europe you are likely to be able to purchase flavonol-rich chocolate in the stores.

-          if you find this too bitter, create a hot drink by gently melting the chocolate and stirring in hot water or milk and a little sugar.

-          mind your portion size!  The truly dark chocolate is just too much to eat lots of; the so-called chocolate with little cocoa, and lots of additives like sugar, should stay on the supermarket shelf.

-          remember that you don't have to eat chocolate every day. There are a huge range of valuable foods available to us that can also help lower your blood pressure (hint: they're high in fibre and minerals, like legumes, fruit and oats)

How do you like to eat your chocolate? Care to share your special recipe with us? 

What's the mineral that pre-school children are most likely to become deficient in? Full marks if you chose 'iron'. There are other very important minerals too, including zinc, calcium and iodine; but children between one and three are most at risk of developing iron deficiency anemia. Why? Because during the huge growth spurt in their first year of life, your child used up a vast amount of their iron stores to create more haemoglobin (that's the red part of blood cells that carries oxygen around your body).

In a perfect world, your child's diet would easily fulfil this extra need for iron. But there's a problem. Pre-school children rapidly develop firmly held concepts of what food they like and dislike, to the immense frustration of their concerned parents! To compound the situation, the relatively slower growth rate of the pre-schooler often reduces their appetite as well. Parents often shake their heads, baffled about how their child is continuing to thrive on what seems to be a small selection of tiny quantities of specific foods.

The most easily absorbed sources of iron come from animal sources, especially red meat, but your child probably isn't interested in chewing through that carefully cooked steak or stew; instead, present easily eaten foods like rissoles, eggs or fish cakes. (When you're preparing the rissole mix, add some finely chopped spinach, as leafy green vegetables are also a good source of iron.)

To ensure your pre-schooler has a better chance of obtaining the nutrients they need, offer smaller quantities more often, in finger-food sizes, and with a variety of textures and colours. A general rule of thumb is to offer one tablespoon of each food for every year of age. For example, you could offer your two year old a small rissole with a little pumpkin mash, plus green beans. Or for lunch, a fish cake accompanied by a selection of raw carrot, capsicum and zucchini in easy-to-handle pieces. For breakfast, try scrambled eggs, or a soft-boiled egg with toast 'soldiers' to dip into the nutrient-dense yolk. For snacks, try small fruit serves like strawberries, grapes or apple wedges.

There are lots of great books out there to give you recipes and ideas to create meals your pre-schooler is more likely to eat.

Conflict with your pre-schooler over food may achieve little more than increasing your personal stress levels! Just keep offering a wide variety of healthy foods, small quantities, and leave those lollies, soft drinks and biscuits on the supermarket shelf.

If you're concerned that your child may have become malnourished from their fussy food choices, don't just reach for the vitamin supplement – talk to your health practitioner for an assessment, support, and ideas to improve your child's nutrition.