Dr. Mike’s Nutritional Health Advice: Eat Fruits and Vegetables!
Filed Under: Health & Wellness
The benefits of fruits and vegetables are pretty obvious…you already heard more than a 100 times about their excellent dietary source of fiber, vegetable proteins and protective micronutrients!
What I do like to point out is the following:
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), non-communicable diseases (NCD’s), especially cardiovascular diseases, cancer, obesity and type 2 – diabetes currently kill more people every year than any other cause of death. Four factors in the epidemiology of these diseases – poor diet, physical inactivity, tobacco and alcohol use – are of overwhelming importance to public health.
It’s obvious that I’m not writing this book for smokers or alcoholics. They need to stop smoking and drinking FIRST, and then implement the action plan in this book. But to continue, the WHO reported that low fruit and vegetable intake is estimated to cause about 31% of ischemic heart disease and 11% of strokes worldwide. Overall it’s estimated that up to 2.7 million lives could be saved each year if fruit and vegetable consumption was sufficiently increased.
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With regard to health benefits, it’s better to consider fruit and vegetables as a broad food group rather than splitting them into individual fruits and vegetables. This is more useful because it’s not known which components in fruits and vegetables are beneficial. So, there is certainly a need to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables, but it’s also important to increase variety to ensure the best possible health benefits. Also, these fruits and vegetables need to be organically grown and consumed fresh!
I’d like to remind you that a well overlooked benefit of the regular consumption of grasses, grains, seaweed, fruits and vegetables is that they are highly alkalizing, explaining many of the multiple health benefits they have for the human body.
A frequently asked question I would like to cover in this chapter is the energy density of fruit and vegetables. Many people worry about the sugar load in many of these fruits and vegetables. What I will share with you is that you are right: many fruits and vegetables are high in sugars (both simple and complex sugars) and do not necessarily decrease the energy density of the diet. There is a need to consider how people are preparing and eating them. Fruit and vegetables need to replace other high energy foods in the diet to effectively decrease its energy density. It’s not the purpose of this book to expand on the Glycemic Index (GI), but if you wish to learn the FACTS on GI, read my book ‘Sensible Weight Loss’.
Yours in Optimal Health,
Dr. Mike
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I’m a vegetarian and I live off of fruits and vegetables; go veggies!
Comment by Bryan — January 5, 2010 @ 12:37 pm
Are smoothies a great way to combine the two?
Comment by William — January 5, 2010 @ 12:38 pm