Tropical Fruits and Vegetables as Immune Boosters against Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): Call for Cautious Optimism doi.org/10.26538/tjnpr/v5i9.1
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Abstract
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues as the major health challenge of today, primarily due to a delay in global access to definitive therapeutic interventions.Therefore, prevention still remains the major containment option globally, even as the race against time to develop lasting therapeutics continues. One of such preventive approaches being advocated is the maintenance of healthy diets to boost the immune system. Specifically, in sub-Saharan Africa, this option is receiving huge attention owing to her richness in tropical foods such as fruits and vegetables with immune-boosting properties. However, while fruits and vegetables score high as immune boosters, it is important to properly lay out the facts in order to be well informed. Therefore, this short-review outline some findings supporting tropical fruits and vegetables as rich sources of bioactive phytochemicals including phenolic compounds with immune-boosting properties alongside the effect of processing/culinary practices on such properties which could significantly influence their overall medicinal properties. This review chronicles some tropical fruits and vegetables as well as their therapeutic properties. Also, the influence of culinary practices/processing methods on their bioactive components and therapeutic properties were presented. Fruits and vegetables remain a rich source of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory phytochemicals that have been widely acclaimed to help in the management of some degenerative diseases and boost the immune system. However, it is important to be well informed on how various processing and culinary practices could influence the medicinal properties of these foods in order to be able to explore them for their maximum benefits.
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