You know those glorious leather bound books, the ones with gold lined pages and deeply etched lettering? On a shelf, they make for a stunning display, but when they’re filled with the words of brilliant authors, you’re even more proud to have them out when guests enter your space. You can pick them up at your leisure and read bits and pieces or cover to cover because the content is so delightful.

The raspberry is the culinary equivalent of the works of Bill Shakespeare. Decoratively displayed with another food, their blinding red pop lights up your plate or your kitchen table. You don’t even have to eat them to experience their energy. Their beauty can be appreciated alone, without reference to any other attribute.

But when you pop a cold raspberry in your mouth, you experience the subtle but fragrant smell, buttery texture and perfect finish with both sweet and tart overtones. One by one is lovely, but there is nothing like a monster handful.

Shakespeare wouldn’t be nearly as powerful without his humor, and the raspberry wouldn’t be as spectacular without its nearly flawless nutritional profile.

In fact, there is some (very preliminary) research that suggests these little red stunners might be able to fight obesity. From whfoods.com:

One of the most fascinating new areas of raspberry research involves the potential for raspberries to improve management of obesity. Although this research is in its early stages, scientists now know that metabolism in our fat cells can be increased by phytonutrients found in raspberries, especially rheosmin (also called raspberry ketone). By increasing enzyme activity, oxygen consumption, and heat production in certain types of fat cells, raspberry phytonutrients like rheosmin may be able to decrease risk of obesity as well as risk of fatty liver.

This book keeps getting better and better. Go ahead and pop your vitamin C capsule, I’ll just eat raspberries. From FitDay:

Red raspberries are very high in dietary fiber. Up to 20 percent of their total weight is made up of fiber. They’re also a good source of vitamin C, B vitamins, folic acid, manganese, copper, magnesium and iron. One cup of red raspberries provides half the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C, 60 percent of the RDA for manganese and 33 percent of the RDA for fiber. Eating a cup of red raspberries will provide you with all this nutritional value and you will only be consuming 60 calories.

Call me shallow for judging a book by its cover, but in this case, the aesthetics mattered. They led me to discover the many complexities of a food that is now a staple of my morning routine. Go ahead and appreciate the raspberry for its multiple layers of quality and understand that it’s okay to occasionally trust your eyes.