“To taste a watermelon is to know what the angels eat.” Mark Twain

Watermelon screams summer, especially with July quickly approaching. Hot summer days, fireworks, grilled ‘dogs, and taking a heaping chunk out of a slice of watermelon. It’s sweet, has a light texture, and never makes you feel like you’ve overeaten. The reason for that is because watermelon is 92 percent water! Our bodies are usually craving that refreshment of water, which is often why it tastes so good, especially on those long, hot days.  With watermelon standing as one of the lowest fruits in terms of calories on the market, it’s no surprise it is almost always in demand.

Watermelon brings a lot more to the table than good taste and high water content – the fiber that comes along with the fruit is essential for healthy digestion. Along with the fiber, throw in the vitamins, potassium, magnesium, carotenoids, lycopene, and cucurbitacin E, and you end up with a very well rounded fruit. The carotenoids are essentially plant compounds that convert into vitamin A. Lycopene is a type of carotenoid that works as an antioxidant often found in red fruits and vegetables that is found to be prevalent in watermelon. It is this same antioxidant that cucumbers also have as cancer-fighting properties in the digestive system.

Specifically, it has been found that lycopene can aid in reducing the risk of cancer at its forefront. This is achieved because lycopene can help lower insulin growth factors, which help prevent cell division and spreading. Never heard of cucurbitacin E? We get it; it’s not a word that’s thrown around on the daily, so we’ll explain. It is also a plant compound that acts as an antioxidant that specifically helps reduce inflammation. Watermelon is also said to improve heart health, relieve muscle soreness, and is great for the skin and hair. Overall, we suggest watermelon because of its powerful effect on digestion from the water content and fiber. It’s a great everyday fruit that has a surprisingly high amount of health benefits.

So where does watermelon fall in terms of history? Well, it wasn’t always watermelon. It has taken 5,000 years of selective breeding through many different, mixed cultures to arrive at what we know today as “watermelon.” Scientists believe what evolved into our modern day watermelon was cultivated first in Africa before traveling over to Europe. Here’s where it gets interesting – horticulturalists have had a very difficult time tracing watermelon over these said thousands of years due to lack of/lost, mixed up or conflicting evidence. Many horticulturalists blame taxonomists, believing they didn’t keep watermelon in its own classification. National Geographic goes deep into what evidence traces there are and from whom.

The coolest news of it all? Watermelon is sketched, well a version of what it once was, in the Tacuinum Sanitatis, which is essentially a medieval manuscript that has an enormous amount of horticultural images and sketches.

The more you know…