You’ve always heard it from your parents when you were a kid: “Eat your vegetables!” But do you know why you should stray further away from meat and lean more towards produce? These nutrition tips below will explain why fruits and vegetables are the way to go.
The benefits you’ll receive from fruits and vegetables are quite numerous. For starters, you’ll be ingesting a lot less fat, a lot less carbohydrates, far fewer calories, and you’ll be receiving the essential vitamins and minerals that your body needs to thrive. You’ll start to look better and feel better. And with the amount of fiber in produce, you’ll actually feel fuller than eating a piece of fatty meat.
There’s no replacement for fresh produce; you’ll simply get more nutrients out of it. So it’s always best to buy in season. Of course, some products aren’t available depending on the season, while others will be. So you should plan your menu around what’s locally available.
A farmer’s market is more likely going to give you organic produce that hasn’t been treated with harsh chemicals. And since they cut out the middleman and the subsequent shipping costs, you can buy the product for less money. Best of all, homegrown items taste better than mass-produced items.
Fruits and veggies that aren’t organic may have come from China or somewhere else where they’ve long passed their peak of ripeness. Secondly, and more obviously, the herbicides and pesticides used on non-organic produce can harm you.
Apples are great, but Brussels sprouts are even better for you. Swiss chard is a great vegetable. Opting for turnips and carrots and other root veggies instead of potatoes will give you a more nutritious option. You just have to look beyond the obvious choices.
When you juice produce, you’re actually pulling out more of the essential vitamins and minerals, because you’re juicing the skin, stem, core and seeds of the item in some cases and not just eating the flesh. This obviously gives you a lot more bang for your buck.
Being creative will make fruits and vegetables more appealing to you and to your family. Try removing the noodles from spaghetti and using spaghetti squash instead. Use fresh berries to make cold smoothies instead of eating ice cream or drinking a milk shake. Grill pineapple for a filling, smoky, tasty snack. The sky is the limit here.
If you cannot find a fruit or vegetable in season but really want to purchase it anyway, then you should always opt for a frozen item over a canned item. Frozen items are usually picked at the peak of freshness and are instantly flash frozen when they’re still raw. With most canned items, however, they’re cooked inside of the can to pasteurize the items, and they lose all their freshness.
Reading these tips, you should have a good idea of what to look out for in the store and why you should be eating more fruits and vegetables. It’s easy to incorporate these items into a healthy diet. You only have to want to make the change.