Yellow Watermelon Nutritional Content

If you're looking for a way to jazz up your fruit salad, consider adding cubes of yellow watermelon. It's sweeter than its red-fleshed cousin, but just as juicy and thirst quenching. Yellow watermelon, available in both seeded and seedless varieties, not only adds brightness to your sweet salad, but also nutrients that protect your body from illness.

If you're trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, yellow watermelon is a good choice. A 1-cup serving of the yellow fruit contains just 46 calories. Not only is the watermelon low in calories, but because of its large serving size, it is also very filling. Eating foods low in calories and filling can help you reduce your overall calorie intake without making you feel deprived, which in turn helps make it easier for you to stick to your reduced-calorie diet.

The majority of the calories in the yellow watermelon come from its carbohydrate content. A 1-cup serving of the fruit contains 12 grams of carbohydrates and 1 gram of protein. Carbs are the body's primary and preferred source of energy. Of the 12 grams of total carbs in the yellow watermelon, 10 grams come from sugar and 1 gram from fiber. While most of the carbs are in the form of sugar, the yellow watermelon is still considered a healthy source of carbs because of its fiber, vitamin and mineral content.

The yellow watermelon is a good source of vitamin A and vitamin C, meeting 18 percent of the daily value for vitamin A and 21 percent of the daily value for vitamin C. It also meets 5 percent of the daily value for potassium (see reference 2). Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin necessary for making and repairing skin and blood vessels, as well as healing wounds. Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin that supports immune and eye health. As a mineral and electrolyte, potassium helps build proteins and maintain acid-base balance in the body.

While yellow watermelon makes a healthy addition to your diet, it's important to note the slight difference in nutrition between the yellow and red varieties. Yellow watermelon is a good source of beta carotene and red watermelon is a good source of lycopene. Beta carotene and lycopene are provitamin A carotenoids found in plants. The body is able to convert beta carotene to vitamin A in the body, but is not able to convert lycopene. Both beta carotene and lycopene are antioxidants, and may provide protection against cancer and eye disease.