Why More Fruits and Vegetables?

There is nothing better than fresh live whole foods for optimal nutrition. So eating fruits and vegetables is one of the tried and true recommendations for a healthy diet - and for good reasons. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can help you ward off heart disease and stroke, control blood pressure and cholesterol, prevent some types of cancer, avoid a painful intestinal ailment called diverticulitis, and guard against cataract and macular degeneration, two common causes of vision loss.

What does "plenty" mean? More than most Americans consume. The latest dietary guidelines call for five to thirteen servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

The largest and longest study to date, done as part of the Harvard-based Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, included almost 110,000 men and women whose health and dietary habits were followed for 14 years. The higher the average daily intake of fruits and vegetables, the lower the chances of developing cardiovascular disease.

Increasing fruit and vegetable intake by as little as one serving per day can have a real impact on heart disease risk. According to these two Harvard studies, for every extra serving of fruits and vegetables that participants added to their diets per day, their risk of heart disease dropped by 4 percent.

Fruits and vegetables are clearly an important part of a good diet. Almost everyone can benefit from eating more of them, but variety is as important as quantity. No single fruit or vegetable provides all of the nutrients you need to be healthy. The key lies in the variety of different fruits and vegetables that you eat.

My favorite URI International live whole foods are made from a wide variety of fruits and veggies! They are a very convenient way for you and your family to get plenty of fruits and veggies every day even if you have a busy lifestyle.