Solid reasons to eat more fruits and vegetables
Now, even more solid reasons to eat more fruits and vegetables
This post is for everyone who doesn't eat enough fruits and vegetables every day. Basically most of us!
First, the bad news. The popular idea that the human brain continues to evolve to get bigger and smarter is actually a myth.
According to John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin anthropologist our brain has actually been shrinking consistently for the last thousands of years now and according to him, over the past 20,000 years, the average human brain has actually shrunk the size of a tennis ball.
So according to him, forget evolving, we humans are probably progressively getting dumber.
But of course some experts beg to differ. They argue that while the brain is shrinking, its wiring is becoming more efficient, transforming us into quicker, more agile thinkers.
Now whichever school of thought is right, it is a proven fact that our diet has a huge influence on our brain and it's working. The connect between intelligence, memory, thinking power and diet, a nutrient-rich diet, has been substantiated enough.
And recently, another strong validation has come via a study published in March in Nature Ecology and Evolution Diet journal. This study suggests that it is theNow we have more solid reasons to eat more fruits and vegetables.
The researchers took into account food consumption across the studied species - folivores (leaves), frugivores (fruit), frugivores/folivores, and omnivores (addition of animal protein) - found that frugivores have relatively larger brains than folivores and, to a lesser extent, omnivores also show significantly larger brains than folivores. These results make it clear that what we eat, and whether or not we have fruits has a significant impact on our brain's size and efficiency.
Scientists feel that this makes logical sense too as eating fruit, offers us a jolt of calories in an easy-to-digest package and seemingly the main beneficiary of all that newly available energy is the brain.
Simply put more fruit in our diet translates into better functioning, bigger size brains. So it seems that's the only saving grace we have till research manages to figure out why our organ of intellect has been vanishing, and whether it is a good thing or bad is to plate more fruits. So we must grab this diktat and eat three servings a day hook or by crook - to keep our brains sorted.
Need more motivation?
Another spanking new research published by Imperial college, London advocates that we should be piling up platefuls of vegetables and raiding the fruit bowl every day if we want the best chance of avoiding chronic diseases or an early death.
It suggests that a daily intake of even 200g, or two and a half standard 80g portions, is associated with a 16 per cent reduced risk of heart disease, an 18 per cent reduced risk of stroke, a 13 per cent reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, 4 per cent reduced risk of cancer and a 15per cent reduction in the risk of premature death. Whoa. That's a lot of benefits!
Want even more benefits? Well, the researchers have found that although five portions of fruit and vegetables is good, 10 a day is even better: eating up to 800g of fruit and vegetables has been found to be associated with a 24 per cent reduced risk of heart disease, a 33 per cent reduced risk of stroke, a 28 per cent reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, a 13per cent reduced risk of total cancer, and a 31 per cent reduction in premature deaths.
How difficult can it be to jack up the colourful roughage in our diets. All this means is 3-4 servings of fruits (say one apple at breakfast plus plate of papaya mid morning plus one mango after dinner) and two bowls full of vegetables form both lunch and dinner, and a quarter plate of salad or a bowl of soup too.
The fact is that we have always known how incredibly important vegetables and fruit are for us to stay healthy, and every new research only adds to this knowledge.
But if you find doing this hard, I say begin slowly, one extra portion at a time. One thing I definitely want you to do though starting today is to swap one of your delinquent mid-meal snacks for a piece of fruit. Do it for your brain!