Strawberries are filled with antioxidants – ellagic acid and procyanidins are antioxidants uniquely found in strawberries – which give them the anti-ageing properties to help your body combat diseases and maintain its optimum functions. For children, they help guard against infectious diseases like the common flu.

Try our Strawberry Mousse recipe!

It seems a spoonful of strawberries makes the cholesterol go down. According to a study published in metabolism, eating strawberries daily caused a significant reduction in LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol. Even better, the participants’ LDL levels were less prone to oxidation, the chemical process that really damages your heart and arteries.

Try our Coconut And Strawberry Rice Pudding recipe!

Strawberries also contain good quantities of manganese, which is necessary for strong bones and optimal muscle function. Keeping your bones healthy and strong is important in combating osteoporosis which commonly affects women in their 40s and 50s. In children, manganese helps build strong muscle functions and keep their body healthy and active.

Try our Strawberry Almond Torte recipe!

With the high amounts of antioxidants and vitamin C in strawberries, you can be sure it is a great skin food to consume to maintain smoother and healtheir skin. TIP: Go for organic strawberries which contain much higher amounts of antioxidants, vitamin C and polyphenols than conventionally-farmed ones; plus they have better flavour, last longer and contain more ‘matter per volume’ – that is, more actual fruit, rather than water.

Try our Strawberry Frozen Yoghurt recipe!

What’s the best accompaniment to nice skin? A nice smile! Due to their natural acid content, strawberries can help you get rid of staining on your teeth and make them look whiter. Other than eating them, try this hack: Mash up a strawberry till it’s a fine pulp, coat your toothbrush with the mashed strawberry and use it to scrub your teeth. Rinse thoroughly with warm water.

Along with heaps of vitamin C, fibre and folate, strawberries have particular disease-fighting antioxidants that few other fruits have, called anthocyanins: These are the plant chemicals that give strawberries their gorgeous ruby-red colour. Anthocyanins reduce inflammation (which is a major symptom in many chronic diseases, including cancer), provide powerful anti-ageing properties that protect and repair cells from unstable oxygen molecules called free radicals, curb the spread of cancer cells, and reduce tumour growth. In test-tube experiments, strawberry compounds have been shown to interfere with the development of human leukaemia, lung, breast, and prostate cancers.

Eating foods that are low on the Glycaemic Index (GI) is more than just a smart way to maintain your weight. A study from the Human Nutrition Research Center on Ageing at Tufts University in Boston, USA, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, shows that a low-GI diet also reduces the risk of age-related macular degeneration (MD) by 17 per cent, due to the high antioxidant content of low-GI foods. And you can’t get much lower GI than strawberries: their tiny carbohydrate content means you can enjoy them by the bowlful, and they will have almost zero impact on blood glucose, making them a delight for diabetics, too.