Powerful, Proven, Essential Fruits and Vegetables :: Food and Nutrition :: Whole Foods

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Powerful, Proven, Essential Fruits and Vegetables
by author Sam Graci

Recent surveys indicate that less than nine per cent of North Americans consume five or more servings of fresh fruits, vegetables, and salads daily. Yet, almost every major health organization has advised that eating five-to-nine servings of colourful fruits, vegetables, and salads per day is our very best disease protection.

Vegetables, salads, and fruits, when consumed in optimum amounts, have been shown to protect against almost every disease common to humans.

Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, cauliflower, and broccoli sprouts contain a phytonutrient called indole-3-carbinol (13-c). This powerful phytonutrient forms di indolylmethane (DIM) in the stomach, which, according to research, significantly reduces the level of 15-alpha-hydroxyestrone - a promoter of breast cancer. 13-c or DIM upregulates the tumour-suppressing gene BRCA-1, which blocks estrogen from sending the signals that enhance the growth of breast cancer cells. Cruciferous vegetables also increase the protective estrogen metabolites, 2-hydroxyestrone and 2-methoxyestrone and may reduce the risk of cancers related to hormone and estrogen replacement therapy.

Phytonutrients to the Rescue

Phytonutrients are nutrients found in the various colours of fruits, vegetables, and salads and they seek out, confront, dismantle, and discard bacteria, viruses, and carcinogens safely from the body. A phytonutrient of great interest to men is lycopene because it shrinks existing prostate tumours, slows their spread, and decreases prostate cancer-cell volume.
People who eat the most fruits, vegetables, and salads have the least amount of almost any type of cancer. It’s as simple as this - each day, just eat a large colourful salad, three or four servings of fresh colourful vegetables, and two or three servings of coloured fresh fruits, berries, or melons.

Superior Nutrition Fast

Green foods are extremely important because they provide individual combinations of necessary nutrients we don’t typically receive in our diet. Buffalo and elephants grow strong and robust eating green grasses loaded with fibre, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and protein.
Available in major grocery stores, whole food stores, and most pharmacies are organically grown vegetables and green grasses, grown with high concentrations of nutrients that are quickly dried and put in airtight, nitrogen-flushed containers. They are convenient, affordable, and good tasting. Each tablespoon is equivalent to six servings of vegetables.

Improve Your Health Quickly

Because many commercially grown vegetables and fruits contain only 50 percent of many nutrients they contained in 1980, Dr Walter Willet of Harvard Medical School calls, “…a daily multivitamin a good, cheap insurance policy.” The Journal of the American Medical Association, in March of 2002, printed research that suggests that all North Americans should be taking a multi vitamin-mineral supplement daily.

Cutting Edge Supplementation

Green food powders or capsules that have additional - food-grown - vitamins and minerals are now available in grocery, whole food stores, and pharmacies. This is a new concept in multi-vitamin minerals: convenience, enhanced absorption, synergy, and great taste. Just add one scoop to water, unsweetened fruit or vegetable juice and you have the best life insurance in the world, just the way Nature intended you to: Six full servings of organic vegetables, all your necessary vitamins and minerals with no pills, no capsules, no inconvenience. Being healthy has never been so easy - try it yourself, and enjoy a zestful, happy, and healthy life - for life!

Sam Graci is a renowned lecturer, consultant, and researcher in the field of optimal human health and nutrition. He is author of the Canadian best seller The Power of Superfoods (Penguin, 2002) and The Food Connection: The Right Food at the Right Time (Wiley, 2002).

Source: alive #258, April 2004

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