Eating fresh
fruits and vegetables is an important part of a
healthy diet. They are filled with important vitamins, minerals, fiber and anti-oxidants essential to keep your body properly fueled and healthy.
Here are some tips on getting more fruits and vegetables into your diet.
Put
deeply and brightly colored fruits and vegetables into your meals, and try to eat a rainbow of colors every day.
Eating a
wide variety of fruits is one of the best things you can do to stay healthy. Fruits give you natural vitamins, antioxidants, complex sugars and good dietary
fiber. Fresh local fruits is preferred over frozen or canned, but any are better than none at all. Explore other non-traditional fruits to mix-it-up, like mango and papaya.
Dark leafy green vegetables are great for your diet because they are full of vitamins A, C, E and K, as well as calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, and zinc. For example, they help to strengthen your cardiovascular system and blood supply. Unfortunately they are among the least used foods in our diet. The good news is that they're easy to buy (or grow yourself). Broccoli, Chinese cabbage, kale, and mustard greens are delicious and can be found in many of MealMixer's
recipes.
Corn, carrots, sweet potatoes, beets, winter squash, onions and other
sweet vegetables are also easy to prepare and found in numerous recipes. They're a great way to limit the cravings for other more unhealthy sweets.
You should avoid "convenient" fruit in the form of juices since they are typically filled with sugar. A better alternative is to dilute 100% fruit juice with carbonated water to make a spritzer. The same can be said of many canned fruits since they usually contains sugary syrup, or even worse, high fructose corn syrup; opt for fruit packed in 100% juice instead.
Dried fruits are excellent sources of fiber and keep much of their overall health benefits. Be careful to not over consume, as they can be very high in calories.
Be a locavore by buying your fruits and vegetables locally. Have fun going to your local farmers' market which offers a great variety of produce. Supporting these farmers will help support your surrounding community and keep it well cared for for your children and grand-children. You might even consider joining and CSA (short for Community Supported Agriculture), which is a members based organization that provides
shares of produce from the farm to each member. If you go this route, you need to have a
meal planner to assure that you can effectively use up or put up all of the produce you'll be getting.