If I had just one chance to give a single piece of health advice to someone who asked, I would say “Eat more fruits and vegetables.” That’s it.
If you’re eating more fruits and veggies, you get two benefits: The first is that you eat more phytonutrients, micronutrients, flavonoids, vitamins, fiber, and all the other good and as-yet-unnamed components of a leaf of spinach or a slice of kiwi.
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No matter how many fruits and vegetables you eat, if you’re still hungry you should feel free to eat more. They are the best snack. They are often the basis for a great meal. If you don’t eat more than 1 or 2 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, there’s plenty of room for improvement; if you eat 4-6 servings, the same is true. Think your lunch is complete? What about adding a few carrot sticks, or roasted eggplant slices sprinkled with fresh parsley, or homemade potato salad or applesauce, or celery sticks with hummus, or mango sprinkled with lime juice, or braised celery, or pickled green tomatoes, or chopped tomato/cucumber salad wrapped in a collard green leaf? What about an apple or half a pint (or more) of strawberries for your 3 p.m. snack? Strawberries dipped in dark chocolate? Go for it.
Does this advice sound like something your mom would have told you? It should.
Think about this: This is the accumulated wisdom of the centuries, the millennia, and further. We are the ones whose families’ guidance and customs gave us perhaps a slight advantage. We are the survivors. Is that mere happenstance? Maybe not.
Stay tuned for next week’s Health & Nutrition Advice 201.
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