Cantaloupe is normally eaten as a fresh fruit, as a salad, or as a dessert with ice-cream or custard. Melon pieces wrapped in prosciutto are a familiar modern antipasto. Sanjeev Kapoor describes the charentais variety: the orange, sugary and fragrant flesh makes this fruit popular both as a dessert or main course. These have smooth gray-green rinds and very fragrant orange flesh. It keeps well when stored in a cool, dry place and ripens after several days in a warm room. A moldy cantaloupe in a Peoria IL market in 1941 was found to contain the best and highest quality penicillin after a world-wide search. Cantaloupe can also be extracted to isolate an enzyme known as super oxide dismutase (SOD), essential for maintaining strong antioxidant defenses in the human body. When paired with a wheat gliadin delivery system to protect it from other more destructive enzymes (a complex known as glisodin), cantaloupe extract has clinically-proven benefits for a variety of health applications.Cantaloupe are a source of polyphenol antioxidants, chemicals which are known to provide certain health benefits to the cardiovascular system and immune system. These chemicals are known to up regulate the formation of nitric oxide, a key chemical in promoting health of the endothelium and prevention of heart attacks.It is good for the liver. Cantaloupes also are an excellent source of vitamin C and beta carotene.
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