Rainbow of Fruits & Veggies Are a Colorful Route to Better Health

New Year’s Resolutions: Eat healthy, more vegetables. We all make this silent promise to ourselves, and it is one that should not be broken because good nutrition—including eating all your fruits and veggies—is key to good health!

Important vitamins and minerals come from the produce we eat. These nutrients are stored in our body to give us energy for the day and can combat the risk for many harmful diseases.

An abundance of fruits and vegetables in your diet can lower blood pressure, lower the risk of heart disease and stroke, prevent some types of cancer, reduce risk of eye and digestive problems, and have a favorable impact on blood sugar, which can help keep appetite in check, according to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Extra veggies are not only delicious, but they also pack a serious punch when it comes to reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event. Eating five daily servings of fruit and vegetables, instead of three, may reduce coronary heart disease and stroke risk by as much as 20%, Harvard and other studies found.

Fruit and vegetables can also support vision health, gastrointestinal health, weight and reduce the risk of certain types of cancer as well as have a positive impact on blood pressure.

Eating all the colors of the rainbow is key when it comes to fruit and vegetables. There are nine different produce “families” that provide a wide swath of vitamins and minerals.

Keep It Colorful

Fruits and vegetables come in terrific colors and flavors, however, their real beauty lies inside. Fruits and vegetables are great sources of many vitamins, minerals and nutrients that may prevent chronic diseases. To get a healthy variety, think color. Some examples include green spinach, orange sweet potatoes, black beans, yellow corn, purple plums, red watermelon, and white onions. Eating fruits and vegetables of different colors gives your body a wide range of valuable nutrients, such as fiber, folate, potassium, and vitamins A and C. For more variety, try new fruits and vegetables regularly.

Look at Nutritional Values

– Prepare more foods from fresh ingredients to lower sodium intake. Most sodium in the food supply comes from packaged or processed foods. Educate yourself by reading the labels on food packaging.

-Fresh produce, when at its peak ripeness, is best eaten as quickly as possible because as it ages, it loses some nutritional value.

– If fresh produce isn’t available or not in season, look in the frozen section of your supermarket. Frozen vegetables are quickly blanched and then sent to the deep freeze, which has very little effect on their nutritional values. Frozen produce is picked at the peak of freshness and ripeness, which optimizes its nutritional value.

-Some of the best frozen options are spinach and peas. With spinach, the blanching process allows for more spinach to be packed into the box or bag than the fresh, fluffy leaves—you’d have to eat a lot of leaves to equal the amount that is in the frozen package (you know how it wilts down when you cook it!). Frozen spinach is a much better bang for the buck. For peas, the freezing process prevents the natural starches from turning into sugars, preventing a dull taste and mushy texture.

-If frozen isn’t an option, look for canned vegetables labeled “reduced sodium,” “low sodium,” or “no salt added.” If you want to add a little salt it will likely be less than the amount in the regular canned product. Canning, with its additional processing, does impact the nutritional value of some items, so read the label to educate yourself and make the best choices for you.

-The best-canned vegetable is the tomato! Yes, here in New Jersey we are blessed with amazing tomatoes when they are in season. But, that season is woefully short! During the canning process, the tomatoes release lycopene-a carotenoid that may help prevent prostate and breast cancer.

– Select vegetables with more potassium often, such as sweet potatoes, white potatoes, white beans, tomato products (paste, sauce, and juice), beet greens, soybeans, lima beans, spinach, lentils, and kidney beans.

Vegetable Types

Vegetables are available in many varieties and can be classified into biological groups or ‘families’, including:

Leafy green – lettuce, spinach and silver beet

Cruciferous – cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and broccoli

Marrow – pumpkin, cucumber and zucchini

Root – potato, sweet potato and yam

Edible plant stem – celery and asparagus

Allium – onion, garlic and shallot.

Keep It Clean

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) nutrition experts, advises rinsing all fresh fruits and vegetables before eating them. This recommendation also applies to produce with rinds or skins that are not eaten.

Rubbing fruits and vegetables by hand under running water usually does the trick. Or you can use a scrub brush for produce that has rough or grooved skins. Soaking is not advised, because the water is stagnant; make sure you rinse under running water. Pay attention to crevices that grit can hide in, such as between the florets of broccoli and cauliflower, or the grit hidden in the wrinkles of mature spinach leaves. Remove the outer leaves of lettuce and cabbage.

Once you’ve prepared and cooked your vegetables, spend some time on the presentation. People are more likely to enjoy a meal if it’s full of variety and visually appealing, as well as tasty. Sit at the table to eat and enjoy your food with the ones you love.