watermelon recipes

Get a major boost of lycopene—which helps protect your skin and may lower your cancer risk—from our great-tasting watermelon recipes.

This satisfying salad mixes sweet watermelon with tangy feta cheese.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—With its vivid green rind and brilliant red fruit color, watermelon is a true summer icon—and it’s juicy, sweet taste rarely disappoints. When you’re buying this fruit for any of the following watermelon recipes, you can choose melons that are round or oblong, seeded or seedless, and with deep red, yellow, or even white insides. That said, the deeper the shade of red, the sweeter the watermelon flesh normally is.

When choosing watermelons, look for firm, symmetrical specimens that are heavy for their size and free of cuts and sunken areas. The rind should appear dull rather than shiny, and look for a cream-yellow spot on one side that indicates the melon ripened in the field. When slapped, the melon should produce a hollow-sounding thump. Cut melon should be eaten within a few days, but you can store whole watermelons in the fridge for up to a week. The cold helps keep the flesh juicy and tender.

Besides its amazing taste, this summer fruit can help you stay healthy and trim in the hot weather. For one thing, watermelon is great for keeping you hydrated. A single large wedge provides more than a cup of water. Watermelon is also full of the amino acid arginine, which may help with weight loss, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Nutrition. When researchers gave obese mice supplements of arginine over three months, they found that it decreased body fat gains by 64 percent. Arginine works by boosting the oxidation of fat and glucose and increasing lean muscle, which burns more calories than fat. Watermelon is also a good source of fluid-regulating potassium, and a very good source of vitamin C.

What’s more, the beta-carotene and lycopene that give watermelon its color also help protect your skin from harmful ultraviolet rays. (They end up in the skin's outer layer, where they help repair cells damaged by sunlight.) Research shows that lycopene also may protect against several types of cancer, including prostate, endometrial, and stomach cancer. Though cooked tomatoes are well-known for their high amount of lycopene, watermelon actually contains about 40 percent more lycopene than raw tomatoes. So it’s no surprise that eating a three- or four-ounce serving of watermelon a day can significantly reduce a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer, according to a recent study published in the International Journal of Cancer. Another study, which appeared in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that consuming more carotenoids such as lycopene also may help preserve bone density in women. In the study, women who consumed the most lycopene-rich foods had less hip and lumbar bone loss than those who consumed the least.