How Fruits and Vegetables can Enhance Health

November 18th, 2011Fruits and Vegetables0 comments

The average person’s diet often consists of bread products, meats, fatty foods and a small amount of fruits and vegetables. It’s the fruit and vegetable intake that is most lacking in the average person’s diet. People avoid these foods without thinking of their health potential. Processed foods are easy to fix, can, often be microwaved and require very little preparation. People don’t realize that most fruits and vegetables are also easy to prepare and need little in the way of cooking.

Fruits and vegetables are low in calories and have large amounts of minerals, vitamins, and fiber. They are good for the digestive tract and are overall healthy foods for the entire body. They happen to be extremely vital for a healthy diet in many ways. Fruit is best eaten whole as it loses some of its fiber when made into a juice. Fruit juices also have a great deal of sugar in them per ounce so that they are bad for diabetic diets.

Fruits should be eaten with the skin on, if at all possible. This is because most of the nutrients are stored just beneath the skin, giving a better nutrition load if the fruit is eaten whole with the skin on. This is where most of the fiber is located so you get more fiber when you eat the skin.

Experts believe that diets should have a predominance of fruits and vegetables. These products are often high in antioxidants, which are believed to be cancer-causing. The recommendation is that about five servings of fruits and vegetables be consumed each day. This sounds like a lot but if they are incorporated into all meals of the day and a snack, five servings can easily be accomplished. Besides being part of a person’s regular diet, it is not too difficult to find a fruit or vegetable that fits into a tasty snack.

It is possible to get nutrition from canned, frozen or fresh fruits and vegetables, although fresh produce is considered to have the highest amount of nutrients. Mashed potatoes do not have the nutrition you need from vegetables because they are too starchy. Dried fruits have a great deal of nutrition in them but they also tend to have too many calories per ounce.

The proper portion of a fruit is one whole fruit, such as an apple, pear, peach or mango. A whole banana counts as well. Two handfuls of cherries are one serving and a handful of grapes is one serving. Dried fruit servings are about a heaping tablespoon of the fruit. One small glass of a juice that does not have added sugar is acceptable as well.

Fruits and vegetables contain healthy phytonutrients that help the body stay healthy. Free radicals are rid from the body with nutrients from fruit and cancer is prevented. Other chronic diseases are helped when people eat a lot of fruit. Vitamin C and Vitamin A is found in fruits and vegetables and are helpful against chronic diseases.

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