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Everyone knows about the importance of vitamins and minerals in our diet, but the phytonutrients in our food also play a huge role in keeping us healthy.

Phytonutrients are the many chemicals that plants produce in order to help them survive from diseases, insects, animals and the like, and those same chemicals ingested by humans help us to survive as well.

While we know that a handful of vitamins and minerals are needed for our health, there are more than 8,000 phytonutrients that have been identified so far in fruits and vegetables. Most plants contain at least several hundred. Many of these nutrients work together to keep us healthy — they serve as antioxidants; they help to lower blood pressure and improve our vascular health; they boost our immunity and help us to fight infection; and they even seem to protect the brain.

Fruits and vegetables that are raised organically are felt to have more phytonutrients than those raised commercially, since organic plants tend to be hardier, as they learn to survive without the benefit of pesticides and insecticides.

Some of our modern varieties of fruits and vegetables, however, are lower in phytonutrients, in part because they have been bred to contain more sugar to please our modern palates. Some foods can also lose huge amounts of these nutrients if they are stored or cooked improperly. It can be challenging to know how to get the most out of the foods that we buy.

Jo Robinson, a health writer, food activist and farmer, has written a wonderful book called “Eating on the Wild Side” that can help us make better choices in fruits and vegetables.

Here are some of Robinson’s recommendations:

• When purchasing greens for your salad, choose red, red-brown, purple or dark-green loose-leaf greens — these have the most nutrients, including antioxidants. Pale lettuces like iceberg that form a tight head are the least nutritious. Include other leafy veggies in your salad like arugula, radicchio, endive and spinach — these are also high in phytochemicals.

• Cruciferous veggies lose the lion’s share of their phyotochemicals if they are stored for long periods of time or if they are cooked, so look for the freshest ones you can find at the farmers market.

Raw broccoli has 20 times more sulforaphane than cooked broccoli, and sulforaphane helps fight cancer. Kale, another cancer-fighting member of the cruciferous vegetable family, is also most nutritious when eaten raw.

• White-skinned white-flesh potatoes tend to raise blood sugar more than sweet potatoes or yams.

• Certain apple varieties are much more nutritious than others; these include Braeburn, Gala, Discovery, Fuji, Cortland, Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, Liberty and Red Delicious. If buying red apples, choose the reddest ones you can find — the red color is an indicator of nutrient content.

• Citrus fruit is known mainly for its vitamin C content, but citrus fruits like oranges are loaded with more than 170 phytonutrients, which provide far more antioxidant punch than just the vitamin C.

• Tropical fruits, especially bananas, papayas and pineapples, along with melons, have much lower levels of antioxidants than other fruits, and are also higher in sugar.

They’re a great treat to have once in a while, but other fruits offer more nutritional benefit and less sugar.