For Better Nutrition - Fresh Fruit or Vitamins? You Decide.

Why do we always try to make easy things difficult? The "news" that eating fresh fruits and vegetables can be beneficial for us has been out for decades. Let’s face it, this is simple, straightforward and easy to understand. But instead of following this advice, we still seek out the latest health fad like vitamin water, powdered supplements, energy drinks and super foods in a jar. How could anything that's been dehydrated, processed in a factory, stored in a bottle for months or years ever be more healthy and nutritious than a fresh ripe pear or a crisp apple?

Here's what science has been telling us for years. Consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables lowers our risks for heart disease, cancer, and stroke (just for starters). And in the 21st Century – can anyone guess what the leading causes of death are? That's right - heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Get it? It's simple. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Health enthusiasts focus on getting enough vitamins and wonder if they are deficient in this mineral or that. I have no problem with that, because we are all sincerely trying to improve our nutrition. My opinion, though, is that there are probably many more micro-nutrients in a simple thing like an orange or kiwi or watermelon or bunch of spinach that scientists just haven’t identified yet. In fact there are probably many, many more nutrients in a **whole** fruit or vegetable that work together in some synergistic way. The point is that by taking a vitamin supplement, you are receiving a narrow slice of the nutrient profile that is otherwise available from eating the whole fruit or vegetable, not to mention the fiber. As an example, scientists from Cornell University announced that the common apple contains unique combinations of thousands of phytochemicals that somehow seem to be working together as antioxidants to retard tumor growth in cell cultures and animals.

I am not arguing against taking a multi-vitamin - I just think we can do a better.

Nature extracts many highly-nutritive components from the soil, absorbs them through the root system of a fruit tree or vegetable plant and creates a readymade, nutritious food for all of us to consume. It's what nature intended us to be eating. To try to replace all of these micronutrients by taking a pill containing 500mg of synthetic Vitamin C just doesn't seem nearly as good, does it? How could it possibly compare? Let the scientists experiment and discover all of the wonderful nutrients that are contained in fresh fruits and vegetables over the next hundred years. I'm not waiting for that breakthrough report - it's already out. Simplify. Eat more fruits and vegetables!

The One Surprising Fact You Never Knew About Vitamins

There’s one big secret that most people do not know about vitamins. Even the health gurus don’t often talk about this, and it’s important if you really want to be sure you’re providing your body with a steady supply of nutrients.

Did you know that vitamins fall into two basic groups? There are those that your body can store and those that your body cannot store. The two groups depend on what type of liquid the vitamin dissolves in. Vitamins that dissolve in water are called “water soluble” vitamins, and those that dissolve in fat are called “fat soluble” vitamins. In the water soluble group, the vitamins are only temporary visitors - they’re used by the body, but then any excess is excreted upon your next visit to the bathroom. If the vitamin is fat soluble, then – you guessed it – that vitamin can be stored in the body’s fatty tissue and the liver – sometimes for days, sometimes for months.

So which is which? The answer is that all of the B vitamins and Vitamin C are water soluble, meaning they **cannot** be stored in the body. Vitamins A, D, E and K are fat soluble and, therefore, can be stored by the body.

Now it’s true that all of the vitamins are important, but in this fast-paced world, it’s difficult to eat a perfect diet every day. So I like to concentrate on the two big antioxidant vitamins, C and E. I want to be sure I’m getting at least those two covered. (Remember “C “ can’t be stored and “E” can.)

Did you know that the 10 trillion cells in our bodies are generally made up of a watery interior and a fatty cell wall? This is a perfect model for how these two big antioxidant vitamins go to work. The water soluble Vitamin C does its antioxidant cleanup work on the watery interior of the cell. Then, the fat soluble Vitamin E does the same for the fatty cell wall. What a team! Between these two antioxidant vitamins, you’ve got the whole cell covered. With an adequate supply of both, you are going to be doing yourself a big favor, day in and day out.

So here’s a tip. For breakfast, start the day off with a piece of fruit (orange, grapefruit, cantaloupe) to get the Vitamin C going and then have another piece of fruit mid afternoon (kiwis are super high in Vitamin C). When hungry for a snack, have some almonds or sunflower seeds around (preferably raw) to stoke those Vitamin E stores.