Mango

If You Read Nothing Else

One mango covers most of a day's vitamin A, from the carotenoids (the orange and yellow plant pigments your body can use) that make the flesh orange.

Mangiferin, concentrated in the peel and the flesh near it, is the compound the research keeps returning to.

Ripe mango is sweet enough to matter: pair it with yogurt or nuts if your blood sugar is a concern.

Anbeh travelled up the Gulf on trading dhows and settled in Hormozgan and Sistan, where the trees now thrive in the local heat. In the south, it's really two foods: ripe fruit eaten cold in the afternoon, and hard green fruit cut into anbeh torshi, the Bandari pickle served beside rice and fish.

Known to botanists as Mangifera indica.