Your Mom is Right. Eat More Fruits and Vegetables!
In order to consume enough fruits and vegetables necessary for optimal health you need help—you need Daily Produce 24.
"Eat your fruits and vegetables" is one of the tried and true recommendations for a healthy diet. And for good reason.
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.
So what does "plenty" mean? More than most of us consume. Over the past 30 years or so, researchers have developed a solid base of science to back up what generations of mothers preached.
If you don't count potatoes (which should be considered a starch rather than a vegetable) the average American gets a total of just three servings of fruits and vegetables a day. The latest dietary guidelines call for five to thirteen servings of fruits and vegetables a day, depending on one's caloric intake. For a person who needs 2,000 calories a day to maintain weight and health, this translates into nine servings, or 4 cups per day.
Not only is that more than we usually eat in a day, it also expects that what we eat is fresh—not supermarket fresh (which translates into “not rotten”)—but freshly picked, a luxury most of us don’t have.
Today, fruits and vegetables are grown all over the world, picked weeks before they’re actually ripe, and transported to the U.S. This process leaves the produce missing many of vitamins and mineral totals that freshly picked and ripe produce possesses.
In other words, the produce we buy in the supermarket is often phytonutrient poor.
What’s a Phytonutrient?
Despite its high-tech ring, “phytonutrient” (from the Greek phyton for “plant”) simply means a "nutrient from a plant." The best known phytonutrients are carotenoids, flavonoids, and isoflavones.
Carotenoids include yellow, orange, and red pigment in fruits and vegetables. Dark, green, leafy vegetables are rich in the carotenoid, beta carotene, but the usual yellow color is masked by the chlorophyll, the green pigment in the vegetables.
Flavonoids are reddish pigments, found in red grape skins and citrus fruits, and isoflavones can be found in peanuts, lentils, soy, and other legumes.
Phytonutrients Protect the Body and Fight Disease
Have you ever wondered how plants stay so healthy? They don't wear sunscreen or a raincoat, and they don't go to the doctor. The fact is, they make their own disease-fighting chemicals we call phytonutrients. The same phytonutrients that help keep the plant healthy keep our bodies healthy.
Phytonutrients provide medicine for cell health. They help the cells repair themselves by stimulating the release of protective enzymes or those that rebuild damaged cells. Other phytonutrients inhibit cancer-producing substances, reducing their ability to damage cells. When the repair squad can stay ahead of the damage, degenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and arthritis, can't get started. Phytonutrients also keep cancer and cardiovascular disease in check.
Phytonutrients Fight Cancer
Cancer starts with a cell out of control. As cells wear out or get injured, they replace themselves with new and healthy cells. Within each cell a network of inner controls (the DNA) keeps this process in check. But with this cellular cloning happening millions of times a minute, there are many opportunities for an occasional cell to defy the rules and get out of control. It may go on reproducing itself, eventually damaging the organ of which it is a part.
The out-of-control cancer cells also try to infiltrate other organs by entering the body's blood vessels and traveling to places near and far, a devilish process called metastasis.
Some cancer cells are probably formed in every person every day. Yet the body's own defense system recognizes these invaders and attacks. Almost always, the body wins the battle, so that these cancer cells either never have a chance to develop, or they are destroyed before they have a chance to spread or cause damage. Occasionally, the body's defenses aren't strong or effective enough to overcome these rebellious cells, and the person "gets cancer."
Phytonutrients fight on the side of the body. Carcinogens (cancer-causing substances) can enter the body from all kinds of sources: tobacco smoke, pollution, pesticides, or just plain bad luck. Carcinogens attempt to enter cells and change how they develop. But antioxidant phytonutrients nab the carcinogens before they have a chance to cause cancer in the cell. If the carcinogen manages to infiltrate the internal controls of the cell, other kinds of phytonutrients help to shut down the precancerous cell so it does not multiply into a gang and overrun the neighborhood. This phyto-protective mechanism explains why cultures whose diets are rich in plant foods have the lowest rates of cancer. The Mediterranean diet, for example, emphasizes garlic, tomatoes, onions, fruits, whole grains, and olive oil—all of which contain cancer-fighting phytonutrients.
Even though there are anticancer phytonutrients in all plant foods, those found in fruits and vegetables seem to be the most powerful. It's not only what fruits and vegetables contain that make them effective cancer-fighters, but it's also what they don't contain—saturated fats and chemical pollutants frequently found in animal foods.
Phytonutrients Fight Cardiovascular Disease
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.
It was found that the higher the average daily intake of fruits and vegetables, the lower the chances of developing cardiovascular disease. Compared with those in the lowest category of fruit and vegetable intake (less than 1.5 servings a day), those who averaged eight or more servings a day were 30 percent less likely to have had a heart attack or stroke!
Although all fruits and vegetables likely contribute to this benefit, green leafy vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, and mustard greens; cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, and kale; and citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruit (and their juices) make important contributions.
Increasing fruit and vegetable intake by as little as one serving per day can have a real impact on heart disease risk. In the two Harvard studies, for every extra serving of fruits and vegetables that participants added to their diets, their risk of heart disease dropped by 4 percent.
Phytonutrients Boost Immunity
Phytonutrients, such as carotenoids and flavonoids, mobilize the body's immune cells, called natural killer cells and helper-T cells. These act like a protective armor to keep invading pollutants and germs from entering the cell.
One of the most important roles of phytonutrients is acting as antioxidants. Here's why your body needs antioxidants.
When the cells in your body burn fuel for energy they burn oxygen as well. When oxygen is burned, molecules called free radicals are released. Free radicals are like vandals loose in your body. They have at least one extra electron, giving them a negative charge, which drives them around the body looking for cells with which they can react. These reactions damage the DNA and other substances in cells. Much of the time the cells can repair themselves, but the cell neighborhood can't protect itself from these gangs of free radicals all by itself.
Phytonutrients are known for their powerful antioxidant, anticancer, and heart disease protective properties. Antioxidant molecules have a positive charge, so when they meet up with the negatively-charged free radicals they neutralize them—handcuff them so they can't do any damage.
Your body needs more phytonutrients as you get older, since the body's ability to repair itself diminishes with age. Antioxidants also help to prevent damage by carcinogens, such as ultraviolet radiation, tobacco smoke, and environmental pollutants.
So are you getting your Phytonutrients?
References
1. Prior, Ronald. Bioavialability of Phytochemicals from Fruits and Vegetables, USDA, ARS, Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, 2007.
2. Young, J.C., L. Kruskall, J. Dolgan, and R. Hesslink FASEB Journal 18 (5)z; 825.10,2004.
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