The "news" that eating fruits and vegetables can be beneficial for us has been out for over 30 years. Instead of following this simple advice, we seek out the latest nutrition fads like vitamin waters, green powder supplements, and superfoods in a jar. How could anything that's been dehydrated, processed in a factory, stored in a bottle for months or years ever be more healthy and nutritious than a fresh ripe apple or a head of broccoli?
"Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth society will flourish." - Warren Buffett
Science has been telling us for over 30 years that eating fresh fruits and vegetables lowers our risks for heart disease, cancer, and stroke (among many, many other benefits). And what are the current leading causes of death? That's right - heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Get it? It's simple. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables (organic if possible).
Health enthusiasts focus on getting enough Vitamins C and E (the antioxidant vitamins) and wonder if they are deficient in this mineral or that. I have no issue with that, because we are sincerely trying to improve our health. My own opinion, though, is that there are probably countless more unidentified micronutrients in a simple thing like an orange or kiwi or cantaloupe or sprig of parsley that scientists haven't yet identified. In fact there are probably many more nutrients that you ingest when eating a whole fruit or vegetable that work together in some synergistic way that is not yet fully understood. The point is that by taking a vitamin supplement, you are receiving only one-isolated slice of the nutrient profile that is otherwise available from eating the whole fruit or vegetable, not to mention the fiber. Just this year, scientists from Cornell University announced that the common apple contains unique combinations of thousands of phytochemicals that somehow seem to be working together as antioxidants to retard tumor growth in cell cultures and animals.
Now I am not arguing against taking a multi-vitamin or mineral supplement; I just think we can do better.
Nature has extracted many highly-nutritive components from the soil, absorbed them through the root system of a fruit tree or vegetable plant and created a ready made, nutritious food for all of us to consume. It's what we are supposed to be eating! To attempt to replace all of these micronutrients by taking a tablet containing 500mg of synthetic Vitamin C just doesn't seem nearly as good, does it? How could it possibly compare? So I say, let the scientists continue to experiment and isolate all of the wonderful compounds that are contained in fresh fruits and vegetables over the next hundred or even thousand years. I'm not waiting for that breakthrough special report - it's already out. Eat more fruits and vegetables! Why complicate it any more than it has to be?
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