Cherimoya, also called the custard apple, is a roundish green fruit with a unique scaly outer skin. It has a creamy texture and an exotic, tropical taste. Some compare the flavour of cherimoya to a banana, mango, papaya or coconut.
In Kimironko market, the fruit goes for Rwf 300 per piece albeit only a few vendors sell them.
Benefits
Private Kamanzi, a nutritionist and dietician, says cherimoya contains fibre which improves digestion and regularity.
He says the fibre in this fruit may also provide other health benefits, including decreased risk of some types of cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.
The recommended daily intake of fibre is 28 grams. The rest of the carbohydrate content in cherimoya is starch.
Also, there are 13 grams of naturally occurring sugar in cherimoya. Sugar that occurs naturally in foods is generally less of a concern than sugars that are added to food as part of the processing (called "added sugars”).
Kamanzi says cherimoya is a good source of vitamin C, providing about 12.6 milligrams or about 14 per cent of your recommended daily intake of 90 milligrams.
Cherimoya also provides about 15 per cent of the daily recommended dietary allowances (RDA) for vitamin B6, often called the mood-boosting vitamin.
"Vitamin B6 is also a micronutrient that helps you to maintain a healthy metabolism. Vitamin B6 is important during pregnancy for brain development and immune function in the baby,” he says.
Cherimoya is also one of several tropical fruits that have been studied for the folate that it provides. If you eat the whole fruit, you’ll get 53 mcg of folate or about 13.5 per cent of the recommended daily allowance.
Folate cannot be synthesised by the body, so it must be consumed in foods or provided in the form of a supplement.
Other vitamins in cherimoya include small amounts of thiamine (0.10mg), riboflavin (0.1 mg), and small amounts of niacin and pantothenic acid.
Minerals in cherimoya include potassium, magnesium, iron, and smaller amounts of zinc, copper, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, and calcium.
Vitamins and minerals in this particular fruit may provide certain benefits.
Kamanzi explains that vitamin B6 in cherimoya may help one to preserve memory as one gets older.
He says that some studies have suggested that elderly people who have higher blood levels of vitamin B6 have a better memory.
One can get this nutrient from cherimoya but it is also found in foods such as bananas, meat, fish, legumes, and potatoes.
The vitamin C in cherimoya may help you to reduce the risk of getting cataracts, a condition characterised by cloudy vision.
The National Institute of Health reports that some studies show that people who get more vitamin C from foods have a lower risk of getting the condition.
Many of the health benefits of cherimoya are attributed to the antioxidants that the fruit provides. Antioxidants help to protect cells in your body from damage caused by free radicals.
Specifically, scientific evidence suggests that the overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) may lead to certain chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and neurodegeneration.
Antioxidants in food help to reduce the damaging effects of ROS. However, the topic is hotly debated as too little ROS activity may have undesirable health consequences.
Studies also suggest that the seeds of a cherimoya may provide some benefit in the treatment of leukemia, a blood cancer.