Why eat more kinds of fruits & vegetables....

Today's post: Monday, 4-6-2009

There are a number of key things you can do to keep or restore your health & live longer.

Some of those key things also help you get or stay thin.

Massive amounts of research show that people who eat a lot of vegetables and a moderate amount of whole fresh fruit most days and do it every week and eat very little “fast carbs” such as refined grain foods, foods containing sugar or high fructose corn syrup, etc are dramatically healthier than people who do the reverse. Five to seven servings of nonstarchy vegetables and one or two servings of whole fresh fruit each day is the ideal.

The research on the DASH diet proves eating that way lowers or prevents high blood pressure. You get more potassium, natural vitamin C, fiber, and the natural form of folic acid by eating this way, for example.

Weight Watchers has found that doing this is a key to losing fat and keeping it off. (They rate nonstarchy vegetables as having zero points. That means eating too much of anything else will make you fat; but eating lots of vegetables will not. And that means that eating lots of vegetables means you can still eat a lot of food and not be fat. This makes it dramatically easier to lose fat and keep it off.)

Lastly, we now know that fruits and vegetables are like natural, high quality supplements and, particularly if they are organically grown, contain literally hundreds of vitamins, minerals, and micro- or phyto- nutrients. And those nutrients do every thing from prevent heart disease to preventing cancer. For example, it was in today’s online health news that eating broccoli sprouts not only prevents cancer, if you eat broccoli sprouts often, it can wipe out the h pylori bacteria that causes stomach ulcers.

Even better, eating a lot of vegetables makes it far easier to NOT eat junky carbs that tend to make you fat AND cause type 2 diabetes.

So, anything that’s been discovered to increase the amount of vegetables you eat is quite literally worth its weight in gold or more.

So today’s Early to Rise health article was both interesting and important. Here it is.:

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com .”

“A Great Diet for Your Heart

By Craig Ballantyne

One of the easiest and most effective things you can do to improve your health is to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Researchers from Iran's Obesity Research Center examined fruit and vegetable intake in 840 men and women from Tehran - and the results were dramatic. The subjects who ate a lot of different fruits and vegetables were significantly and inversely associated with cardiovascular disease risk factors.

Specifically, it appears that eating a variety of fruits and vegetables leads to lower LDL cholesterol in a dose-responsive manner. That means you'll get more benefits from eating an apple, an orange, a banana, and some broccoli than you will from just eating an apple and an orange.

So every time you are at the grocery store, add at least one new fruit and one new vegetable to your cart. You can choose from kiwi fruit, avocados, asparagus, pears, spinach, and so many other amazing foods.

Try to be a little better every week with your fruit and vegetable intake and you'll reduce your risk of heart disease in one of the simplest possible ways.

[Ed. Note: Extending your life and living out your years in tip-top health is really a matter of making simple lifestyle choices - like eating a wider variety of fruits and veggies. ….]”

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The reasons for this effect are pretty simple. If you know and have eaten a wide variety of fruits and vegetables that you like or at least find edible, you’ll be more likely to eat some each week. To find out what they taste like in the first place you, or the person who buys your food, have to make a regular habit of going by the produce section in your store and buying food from it. And, if you have eaten enough of a vegetable or eaten it often enough, you’d like a change of pace, you’ll already know a decent size list of things to get instead.

For example, the cruciferous vegetables, particularly if eaten raw, prevent cancer. But if you get tired of broccoli or simply don’t care for it, you can eat broccoli sprouts or raw cauliflower or coleslaw made with both red and green cabbage and some diced onion, you get as much, or more in the case of the broccoli sprouts, of the cancer fighting ingredients.

And, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, you can also try radishes, water cress, Brussels sprouts, or kale.

Or, if you want to have take in a lot of natural carotenes, you can eat broccoli; but you can also eat pasta sauce with garlic, other spices, and extra virgin olive oil and get even more carotenes. Or you can eat carrots or sweet potato.

Even better, you can try several kinds of berries, blueberries, strawberries, black berries, raspberries, and more.

(The book, SuperFoods, is incorrect on its information about soy foods. But it’s superb on everything else; & it contains extensive lists of similar foods for each fruit and vegetable it lists as a superfood if you need a good starter list for reference.

Another good place to look is a large book of salad recipes.)

Eating these real foods that are very low calorie and high nutrition is like any other skill. The more you practice it and the more variations you try, the more skilled you become at using it.

And the benefits to your health and pocket book are extremely large.

Doing this improves and protects your health better than any prescription drug can other than antibiotics when you have dangerous bacterial infection. Eating a wide variety of fruits an vegetables costs far less than the doctor and hospital visits and statin drugs and type 2 diabetes drugs and high blood pressure drugs that it can make unnecessary! And other than making you less hungry it has no bad side effects.