Grandma was right all along. For proper nutrition, we should eat fruits and vegetables every day. Contrary to popular belief, there are better choices for vegetables than french fries and catsup.

So if we know how important it is to “eat our fruits and vegetables”, then why do most of us not do so? It’s no longer just a problem with lack of will power.

• Why is it so hard for us to eat right?
  
  
• What has happened to our food?
  
  
• Since we can’t get enough nutrition in our food, then how can we get it?
  
  

Restaurant portion sizes are huge—about 2 to 3 times larger than the food labels list as a serving. Even well-trained nutrition professionals tend to underestimate the amount of fat and calories in restaurant foods.

Food is abundant in the United States. There are 3,800 calories available in the food supply for each person each day. However, the average American (over the age of 4) needs about 2,350 calories per day.

Food advertisements promote mostly foods high in calories, fat, or sugar. Only 2% of food advertising is for fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans, combined.

Americans are not getting the basic nutrition education they need to maintain a healthy diet and healthy weight. Funding for nutrition education pales in comparison to what the food industry spends advertising unhealthy foods.

To make matters even worse, even when we try to eat right in today’s modern diet, food no longer offers enough nutrition.

Fresh foods are commonly regarded as being the most nutrient-rich. From an extensive review of the nutrition literature, we report that there are significant losses of many nutrients in foods during all stages of food production. Two studies have reported that, compared with data collected as little as 30 years ago, some fresh fruits and vegetables contain lower levels of some vitamins and minerals. Given the documented importance of vitamins, minerals and other phytonutrients in supporting good health, we conclude that fresh fruits and vegetables should be the cornerstone of a healthful diet. Considering the difficulties of accessing fresh, nutrient-rich, unprocessed foods on a daily basis, nutritional supplementation is appropriate for most people.

What has happened to our food?

Deterioration of our food supply can be attributed to several factors:  Soil depletion, green harvesting, toxins added before (chemical sprays) and toxins added after (preservatives).

Soil depletion

The soil that we grow our fruits and vegetables in isn’t what it used to be. Soil depletion has many causes but it is primarily a result of corporate farming methods. For thousands of years, farmers have known that soil rotation was essential to keeping the soil from becoming a useless wasteland. Today, in the name of profits, most corporate farms don’t perform required soil maintenance.

Green Harvesting

To compound the problem, our foods are, in most cases, harvested green so they will have longer shipping and shelf life. However, only fully ripened foods provide the full nutritional potential from the phytochemicals (healthful plant chemicals, not vitamins or minerals) they were designed to yield.

Toxins added before (chemical sprays)

There is unfortunately no place on planet Earth that has not been touched by the poisons of the modern world. Pesticides are nearly always applied by air these days. Unless a farm is in a hermetically sealed dome with the world’s most extraordinary air filters bringing in air from outdoors, even foods labeled organic will still have pesticides on it.

Toxins Added after (preservatives)

Important variables affecting nutrient content are temperature, pH, exposure to air or light, type of storage container, and presence of preservatives. Many more of our foods today are processed (boiled, microwaved, canned, frozen, refined, pasteurized, protected with preservatives, etc). Thus, it is certainly legitimate to question whether the nutrients that our ancestors obtained from their foods are also present in our foods today.

Common food additives (such as sodium nitrate) cause folate destruction. Use of sulfite as a food processing aid to inhibit browning reactions can lead to extensive losses of thiamine. Consumption of processed foods containing anti microbial preservatives may also deleteriously affect the bacterial population of our colons, which can in turn affect the bioavailability of nutrients. Bioavailability is "the fraction of an ingested nutrient that is available to the body for utilization in normal physiological functions or for storage".

OK. If we can’t get enough nutrition in our food, then how can we get it?

We have concluded that mother (as always!) knows best. While the value of cleaning our plates is certainly debatable, there is no question that we should eat our vegetables! However, we have shown that because of the nutrient losses in many of our foods today (including fruits and vegetables), our modern diets may be deficient. What can we do? We can plant a garden every summer and try to take the time to visit our local farmers' market. Farmers' markets can be a great source of fresh, locally grown, vine-ripened produce. These markets can also be a source of heirloom vegetables that have not been genetically selected for marketing purposes and may therefore contain more nutrients. If we are obliged to rely primarily on grocery store produce, we can strive to purchase the freshest foods possible (preferably locally grown), check expiration dates, boil vegetables the minimum amount of time in a small amount of water, save this water to use for soup stocks, keep frozen foods cold enough, and try to eliminate our dependence on processed foods. Whole foods are always the best choice because they contain a veritable cornucopia of nutrients. These are worthwhile efforts! Small increases in fruit and vegetable consumption have been shown to significantly influence health outcomes. Nevertheless, because our lifestyles dictate that we rely on many foods that have been cooked or otherwise processed, dietary supplementation makes sense for most people.

In fact, according to the Journal Of The American Medical Association (JAMA) article entitled “Vitamins for Chronic Disease Prevention in Adults” written by Robert H. Fletcher, MD,MSc; Kathleen M. Fairfield, MD,DrPH (JAMA. 2002;287:3127-3129):

Most people do not consume an optimal amount of all vitamins by diet alone. It appears prudent for all adults to take vitamin supplements.

So this is worth mentioning again. Here’s the bottom line:

Considering the difficulties of accessing fresh, nutrient-rich, unprocessed foods on a daily basis, nutritional supplementation is appropriate for most people.

What are some of the benefits of taking dietary supplements?

There are 2 reasons for using dietary supplements. The first reason is to optimize cellular function, which might be justified if delivery of the nutrient in the diet is low due to inadequate food intake or poor selection of foods. The second reason for using dietary supplements would be if genetic diversity and special conditions cause the requirements for the nutrient to increase without corresponding changes in diet.

Can taking dietary supplements help to prevent disease....? ________________________________________________________________


For disease to start and then worsen, it must outmaneuver the many mechanisms of one of the most highly advanced systems ever designed....the human immune system.
The immune system remains as both your first and last defense against disease.

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On a more personal note...

In June of 2004, my wife  LaDonna    was diagnosed with  autoimmune hepatitis after blood tests, a liver scan, and a liver biopsy revealed 85% damage. Her doctor recommended that she should consider a liver transplant as soon as possible.

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