Top 5 Best Food Sources of Vitamin C You Should Have Everyday & Big Mistake to Avoid

There are many signs and symptoms of deficiency, most of which are related to impairments in collagen production or not consuming enough antioxidants. Vitamin C is the world’s best natural antibiotic, antiviral, antitoxin and antihistamine.

Some of the earliest signs of deficiency include fatigue, red gums, easy bruising and bleeding, joint pain and rough, bumpy skin.

As the deficiency progresses, bones may become brittle, nail and hair deformities can develop, wounds may take longer to heal and the immune system suffers.

Inflammation, iron-deficiency anemia and unexplained weight gain may be other signs to watch for. Here is another post about Signs of Vitamin C deficiency.

In this post, we will show you top 5 best food sources of Vitamin C.

1. Acerola cherry

An average acerola cherry is about 4.8g and it has about 134% of our daily vitamin C requirements. In many places, it is also called Barbados Cherry. It is the vitamin C richest fruit so far. So with 1 or 2 acerola cherry per day, you should be good in vitamin C.

However I cannot get fresh acerola cherry from my local market. Instead, I like to get acerola cherry powder and also make sure it is the organic  for best quality.

If you are a smooth lover, then this power from Amazon works really.

If you like gardening, you can even get acerola cherry trees to plant in your garden. They are small like tomatoes plants and easy to take care of. I don’t have space for garden, so that option won’t work for me.

2. Guava

A guava weights about 55g and it has about %209 or our daily vitamin C requirements. So if you don’t have Acerola cherry, a guava will do the work too.

Guava also has Potassium, Vitamin A, Vitamin B-6, Calcium, Magnesium. It is really a great choice for our overall health, not just vitamin C.

I cannot get fresh guava either but you probably get some from power or tea pack from Amazon. The one above is a pretty good one and it is even recommended by Dr OZ.

3. Bell Pepper

We all love bell pepers, do we? A medium green bell peper has 97mg of vitamin C, about 100% of our daily vitamin c requirements. A medium red bell pepper has 125mg of vitamin C which is %253 of our daily requirements. A similar yellow bell pepper has 341mg vitamin C which is whopping %569 of our daily requirements.

You should be able to find bell peppers in pretty much any grocery stores. So when you do grocery shopping, make sure to have bell peppers in your shopping list.

4. Kiwi Fruits

Kiwi Nutritional Facts to Know

• 42 calories (cal)
• 215 milligrams (mg) of potassium, or 5 percent recommended daily value (DV)
• 1 g of dietary fiber, or 8 percent DV.
• 8 g of protein, or 2 percent DV.
• 23 mg of calcium, or 2 percent DV.
• 64 mg of vitamin C, or 107 percent DV.
• 2 g of sugar.

As we can see, one Kiwi has 64mg of vitamin C which represents 107% of our daily requirements. But also be aware, kiwi is normally pretty sweet. Watch out for your sugar intake as well.

5. Lemon, Orange

I put Lemon and Orange because they both have similar amount of vitamin C.

According to World’s Healthiest Foods, a quarter cup of lemon juice contains 31 percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin C and 3 percent of folate and 2 percent of potassium — all for around 13 calories. A whole raw lemon contains 139 percent of the recommended daily vitamin C intake and has 22 calories.

One medium orange (approximately 154 grams) contains 80 calories, 0 grams of fat, 250 milligrams of potassium, 19 grams of carbohydrate (14 grams of sugar and 3 grams of dietary fiber) as well as 1 gram of protein. And it has 85% of recommended daily vitamin C intake level.

So overall, as you can see, it is quite easy to meet our daily vitamin C requirements by taking 1 – 2 of any those fruits listed above.

Big Mistake To Avoid

With our busy work schedule, a lot of people chose supplements pills instead of natural source like food and fruits. The problem is not that pills not working, but the quality of pills varies. The source is most of them unknown. In order to make the bill form as tablet, manufacturers often add unnecessary materiel into the pills which might be even harmful to our body.

To avoid this type of problem, if I cannot get fresh whole foods like peppers, oranges, I would rather get organic powder like acerola cheery powder. They are far better than pills. Plus, think about it, why there are so many brands of vitamin C pills in sores? Because there is money to be made. But in fact, they are probably not as good as you think.

So, have more fruit and vegetables and stay healthy! Cheers!