It becomes a thing of repetition and redundancy when you read the posts here and keep seeing news, recommendations, and education on fruits and vegetables and the importance of consuming plenty of them each day. Well, good habits must be reinforced and don't become habits unless you're thinking about, talking about, and doing them each day or as frequently as necessary. And because most of us don't eat enough of those healthy foods, we recommend adding Juice Plus+ to your daily diet, and will con continue to do so until we all reach that minimum. But although Juice Plus+ does provide nutrients from a variety of fruits and vegetables, it is no substitute for those foods. And here's more reason that you should work on adding more of those foods to your diet --
Increased intakes of fruit and vegetables may decrease markers of inflammation linked to a range of chronic diseases, says a new study from Spain.
Scientists report in Nutrition & Metabolism that people with the highest intakes of fruit and vegetables have significantly lower levels of markers of inflammation, and thereby supporting recommendations to consume five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.
“In this context, nutrigenomic approaches have been performed as a potential useful tool to increase fundamental knowledge concerning the interactions between diet and gene expression,” wrote the researchers, led by José Alfredo Martinez from the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.
“Thus, this study found, apparently for first time, that healthy adults with a high consumption of fruits and vegetables had lower [levels of pro-inflammatory markers in white blood cells],” they added.
The offers promise for reducing the risk of developing chronic inflammation, brought about by an over-expression or lack of control of the normal protective mechanism. Chronic inflammation has been linked to range of conditions linked to heart disease, osteoporosis, cognitive decline and Alzheimer's, type-2 diabetes, and arthritis.
Supporting recommendations
Last month findings from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) appeared to question such recommendations when it reported that for every 200 grams (about two servings) of total fruits and vegetables eaten per day, the incidence of cancer was reduced by mere 4 per cent.
The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was the largest on diet and cancer to date, and included 142,605 men and 335,873 women. The participants were followed for an average of about nine years, during which time over 30,000 cases of cancer were diagnosed.
Despite these weak links, experts from across the globe were quick to note, however, that the results do not undermine recommendations for eating at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, with studies reporting cardiovascular benefits. (reference...)
Comments: There is something to note here when you read above that "the incidence of cancer was reduced by a mere 4 percent" for every 2 servings eaten each day. First, no, 4 percent does not seem like much. But if you eat 10 servings per day, that's a twenty percent possible reduction of cancer! That does assume a linear increase in prevention - in other words, maybe 10 servings per day brings exponentially greater reduction in cancer, like 50% for example. But for now, let's just presume 20% reduction for 10 servings eaten per day (consistently, for years). And since the recommendations have changed to 9-13 servings, we can at least reasonable predict that following those guidelines would bring about some reduction of cancer diagnoses.
Secondly, you have to also take into account that you can't just add something healthy to your diet and still consume lots of "junk" and expect that a big difference will be made with health. Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't take anything if you have a poor diet, quite the contrary.
But if you want to make the biggest difference to your health, then get plenty of a variety of ripe, RAW fruits and vegetables each day, while avoiding soft drinks, fast foods, and tobacco (the three most common contributors to poor health). And, until we have a world of people who are eating the minimum recommended number of those foods, then you'll keep seeing messages related to such!
The Health & Wellness Institute, PC
Official Juice Plus+® Independent Distributor
Comments