Ten Hours and two minutes. That’s how much daylight I have today. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are currently in the time period commonly known as, “aaaaaaaand…it’s gone”.
From our mood to our digestion, we are all affected by sunlight. Let’s think about an orange for a few minutes on this precious day. Not a bad image, eh? It’s got a pretty good reputation as being a sunny happy fruit. Do you think it has the same effect on your body when you eat it in the winter as it does when you eat it in the summer? I’ll end the suspense. Nope. The activity of our cells (and the cells of other living things) is not always the same. It changes depending on the time of day and the season.
We are all controlled by an internal clock (not the media). There are some very sciency proteins involved called BMAL1 and CLOCK, but we won’t go there right now. It’s getting dark soon. Our cellular clocks are set by light signals. This is not science fiction. We feel different in the winter with less light because all of our cells and organs are behaving differently. In addition to light, other important factors, such as nutrition, can affect our biological rhythms. All of this, together, means that our orange, and when we eat it, can change the way our bodies function.
Oranges (and all fruits and vegetables) contain phytochemicals that are good for our health and fight disease. We all need more of this in life. Each orange has a unique phytochemical composition depending on where it was grown and its environmental conditions. When we eat the orange, we eat that information (wait, what?!). The phytochemicals provide our cells with environmental data. Holy cow, really?! Really.
These days, we can pretty much get anything we want, year-round, at the grocery store. Should we eat oranges year-round? Phytochemicals fight disease, in-season or out. It is absolutely beneficial to eat a variety of fruits and veggies every day. It is even more beneficial to get curious about what is in-season where you live and sync up with nature. Not only will you live in harmony with the sun and your food, but you will be an efficient disease-fighting ninja.
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