Getting the Most from Your Fruits and Vegetables

If you’re making the effort to eat the recommended 9 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, good for you! Here are a few tips to help you make sure you get the maximum health benefits from them.



Fresh vs. Canned or Frozen

We used to think that fresh produce was, without exception, nutritionally superior. That turns out to be too broad a generalization. Partly it depends on how long the produce is in transit to your local supermarket and how long it has sat on the shelf.



Produce that is frozen right after harvest may be more nutritious than “fresh”. Just a week after harvest, vegetables have lost up to 75% of their vitamin C content.



It turns out that even canned fruit and vegetables are nutritionally comparable to “fresh”. In a few instances, canned is even better. Canned tomatoes, for example, have more bio-available lycopene because the fruit’s cell walls are dissolved during canning.



Canned cherries are nutritionally equivalent to fresh as long as you use the juice along with the fruit. Again because the cell walls are dissolved in the canning process, some of the nutrients leak out into the juice.



Tags: antiaging foods, fresh vs. canned or frozen, anti-cancer food

How Would You Like Your Produce?

Last Thursday I reminded you that produce – whether fresh, frozen or canned – is good for your health in many ways. Antiaging, anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, heart-healthy, brain-boosting – the list of benefits from eating fruits and vegetables goes on and on. That leads naturally to the questions of how to buy produce and how much to consume.



9 to 10 Servings a Day

The Mediterranean food pyramid recommends an abundance of fruits and vegetables. The USDA food pyramid specifies 2 to 4 servings of fruit and 3-5 servings of vegetables a day.



In our super-size-me world, 9 servings a day may sound like an awful lot of fruits and vegetables. It’s important to realize that the USDA uses more traditional portion definitions.



A serving of fruit is 1 medium apple, banana, orange or pear, 1/2 cup of chopped, cooked, or canned fruit, or 3/4 cup of fruit juice. A serving of vegetables is 1 cup of raw leafy vegetables, 1/2 cup of other vegetables cooked or raw, or 3/4 cup of vegetable juice.



Tags: antiaging foods, recommended serving size, anti-cancer food