Are you getting your 5 a day? That’s the first question you need to ask yourself. Am I including enough fruits and veggies in my diet to keep me healthy? If you’re not, it’s never too late to get started. Fruits and veggies not only provide essential nutrients to produce good health, but they also add necessary fiber to your diet. Fiber has so many benefits. It keeps things moving along in your colon (which is very important), it can prevent diseases like: heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many others, and it also can help you lose weight. Yes lose weight. Bet that got your attention. Fiber not only prevents all these other diseases, but it provides bulk in your diet which makes you fuller faster. When that happens you should eat less. Now that you know why it’s such a good idea to get the green stuff into your diet, how much is enough? In general we should shoot for about 5 fruits and veggies a day. Not per week, per day. If you do that you should be getting the suggested 25-30 grams of fiber per day. Did you know that the average american doesn’t eat half of that. I also ran across a great site today that you might want to check it out. http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov There you can narrow down just exactly how many servings of fruits and veggies you should be eating daily based on your age, sex and activity level. They’ve also got articles, tips and other interactive tools that are very helpful.
Once you’ve started including more fruits and veggies into your diet there’s another part to greening things up that you might want to think about. And it’s not just buying organic. Don’t get me wrong, eating organic is very healthy. However, buying LOCAL is actually healthier for the environment. The average food item travels about 1500 miles before reaching your plate. If we try to buy LOCAL we can help reduce the amount of energy and Co2 emissions into the atmosphere. Buying LOCAL also helps local farmers out and supports your local economy. Easy ways to buy local are: farmers markets, farm stands, U-Picks and CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture). Here’s a really cool site that will help you get started if you’re not sure what to do? http://www.localharvest.org So get more fruits and veggies in, try to by LOCAL and organic and you’ll be feeling "Greener" than ever!