Everyone knows watermelon is one of the tastiest fruits available, but did you know that the sweet fruit contains the alphabet of vitamins (including some vitamins I didn’t even know existed)?

I did some reading about this over the years and decided to compile a snapshot of the nutritional benefits here. For instance, did you know that just one cup of watermelon meets 20 percent of your daily requirement for vitamin C? Or that the same cup contains 18 percent of vitamin A, 2 percent iron and even 1 percent calcium. You’ll also find potassium, thiamin, niacin, vitamin B6, and folate. The list goes on and on, but what you won’t find is a lot of sodium or any saturated fat.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some cubed watermelon in the fridge with my name on it. (No seriously, I do. Where I work, if you don’t put your name on your food, it has a way of mysteriously “disappearing.”)

It’s odd that our shortest month was chosen as the one to raise awareness for our biggest health issue, but 28 days is better than nothing, I guess. Could it have something to do with Valentine’s Day being observed in February? I doubt it, but it’s a good theory.

There are all sorts of facts and statistic about heart health and why it’s important for everyone to learn more about their ticker (for themselves and their loved ones), but the statistic that drives the point home for me is that heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States among men and women.

There are a lot of things you can do to create a healthier heart – eat right, exercise, educate yourself about your heart – and I won’t get into all of them here (I’ll let the American Heart Association website do that), but I would like to remind everyone about the heart healthy benefits of fruit and vegetables including watermelon. Actually, I’ll let the National Watermelon Promotion Board do that, too. The National Watermelon Promotion Board (the owner of this blog, of course) has a page on their website about watermelon and heart health that lists the following facts:

1. Watermelon consumption increases free arginine, which can help to maintain cardiovascular function.
2. Eating watermelon can help to maintain cardiovascular health.
3. Watermelon has amino acids, which can help maintain blood flow and heart health.

So how will you observe National Heart Health Month? Might I suggest starting with a trip to your local grocery store’s produce aisle?

A friend forwarded me the following nugget of information the other day. Just when you think you know everything there is to know about watermelon, you learn something like this.

It’s not necessarily a new revelation (though it is to me), but scientists from the USDA Agricultural Research Service have found that eating watermelon stored and served room temperature is healthier than eating chilled watermelon.

The USDA team found that the amount of the antioxidant lycopene, which is already found in watermelon in great quantities, increased between 10 and 20 percent in room temperature watermelons. They also found that the vitamin A-rich antioxidant beta carotene doubled in warmer watermelons.

Now I don’t know about you, but almost nothing beats a nice, cold slice of watermelon or bowl of watermelon cubes, and I’m not in a hurry to take my watermelon out of the fridge. After all, those health benefits are good, but even when it’s cold, watermelon still contains plenty of lycopene and beta carotene. But if you’re anxious to get more vitamins out of your diet, it’s definitely something worth considering!