Nutrition, Health Benefits & Home Remedies Of Sweet Lime

Sweet lime may look like a regular lime, but take a bite and you will immediately taste the difference -- this fruit has a sweet, orange-like taste rather than the usual tart flavor. This fruit, likely native to India, enjoys popularity in the West Indies and Central America, and it imparts a range of nutritional and health benefits. It may also find use in home remedies.

Basic Nutrition

Sweet limes are a good choice for low calorie and low fat diets. A 3.5-oz. serving of this fruit introduces 43 calories into your diet and contains only 0.3 g of fat. The majority of the calories in a sweet lime come from carbohydrates -- one serving has 9.3 g. This is a small portion of the 225 g to 325 g of carbs your meal plan should include each day. You need fewer grams of protein -- 50 to 175 -- but sweet lime will not satisfy a great deal of that; one serving offers 0.8 g of protein.

Vitamins and Minerals

As a citrus fruit, sweet limes provide a good source of vitamin C. Each serving of this fruit contains 50 mg of vitamin C. If you are an adult man, you require 90 mg of this vitamin each day; adult women need 75 mg, although if you are breastfeeding, you should boost your intake to 120 mg daily. You also get 490 mg of potassium per serving, which contributes significantly to the daily recommended intake of 2,000 mg per day. Additionally, a serving of sweet lime provides copper, calcium, iron and phosphorus in smaller amounts.

Home Remedies

When you have a cold, sweet lime may be a beneficial fruit to consume as a home remedy. The vitamin C content of the lime may shorten the duration of your cold, and some homeopathic proponents believe this fruit may also have antiseptic and antiviral properties. The fruit also allegedly boosts liver function and helps to relieve gastrointestinal problems, although no research has been done to prove this use. For best results, consult your physician about eating sweet lime as a treatment for any medical condition.

Health Benefits

The peel of the sweet lime may provide a natural treatment for jaundice. Research published in the February 2009 issue of the "Indian Journal of Biochemistry and Biophysics" indicates that research on jaundiced rats that were fed an extract from sweet lime peel had reduced oxidative stress when treated with phytotherapy. Human studies are needed to confirm these findings.