Nature's Vibrant Design: Why Fruits Aren't Just One Color

Let's take a stroll to the neighborhood fruit and veggie shop. A rainbow of fruits and vegetables delights our eyes and captures our attention. But why all these colors? Wouldn't one uniform color for all fruits and vegetables be enough? And why do unripe fruits all share the same color: green? Wouldn't it make more sense for their final color to appear from the start of their growth?

It turns out that most fruits, when they're ripe and ready to be eaten, sport bright colors—orange, red, yellow—to entice us to eat them. If all fruits were one color, like yellow, we'd probably eat far fewer of them, leading to a significant drop in essential vitamins and minerals in our bodies.

This diversity in fruit colors encourages the consumption of a variety of fruits, ensuring we get the different vitamins and minerals necessary for our health. However, during the unripe phase, when eating them isn't beneficial and might even be harmful, all fruits wear a common color. It's as if they're saying: "Not ready to be eaten yet."

And why do they turn green specifically? It's so they blend in with the leaves, making them less noticeable. This increases the chances that they won't be picked too soon, allowing them to grow properly and fulfill their purpose. Only when they ripen do they swap their camouflaged green for bright, inviting colors, calling out to us to enjoy them—for our health. Is this just random chance, or did someone plan and execute this for us?

And while we're on the subject of fruits, here's another interesting tidbit. Various elements grow from the tree's roots: the trunk, branches, leaves, and fruits. Each one has a different level of hardness. The trunk is harder than a young branch; the branch is harder than the fruit; and the fruit is harder than the leaf. What's harder than them all? The seeds of certain fruits, like plum, peach, and apricot pits, which are hard as stone. This, despite all these parts originating from the same roots and materials.

Why is that? Apparently, because each of these fruits contains only one seed, their seeds have received special protection to preserve the future generation's growth. This protection comes in the form of an extraordinarily tough shell, guarding the seed from human or animal bites. Remarkably, only when these seeds touch soft earth do they seemingly open on their own, allowing their seeds to connect with the soil for future generations.

How does this happen? It turns out that certain bacteria found only in the soil can penetrate the seam between the seed's two halves, dissolving the bond and separating them. Who designed the seed this way, fused from the start? It’s never been split in two before! In fruits with many seeds, where some may get damaged while others still promise the future generation's survival, such hardness isn't present in the seed coat. These have other mechanisms for protecting their seeds.

For example, a bitter taste in the seed, a striking contrast to the pleasant flavor of the fruit. A slippery coating on the seed, like in citrus fruits and watermelons, helps the seed slip away from the one biting the fruit and fall directly to the nurturing earth. Protection via a tough material near the seed, like in apples, creates discomfort for the fruit eater upon reaching that point!

By the way, have we noticed this example of unity in creation, with fruit parts perfectly suited to the human taste experience? The fruit—pleasant to our palates; the seed—unappealing. This fact joins a series of other facts pointing to the existence of the one Creator of the animal and plant worlds!