Eat your FN-GBOMBS.

There has been a lot of news recently about how what we eat is changing our health. Unfortunately, it is not for the better. These are a few of the headlines from nutritional science research in the last few weeks.

New Evidence Links Ultra-Processed Foods With a Range of Health Risks

Millions of Cardiovascular Deaths Attributed to Not Eating Enough Fruits and Vegetables

Stiffening Arteries in Teenagers With Persistent Obesity

Being Overweight as a Teen May Be Associated With Higher Risk of Heart Muscle Disease in Adulthood

Does Your Health in Middle Age Predict How Healthy You’ll Be Later in Life?

Excess Weight and Body Fat Cause Cardiovascular Disease

There is one way to stop the increase in chronic disease, obesity, and mortality.

Food.

You can change your health three times a day. At breakfast, lunch, and dinner. With all the misinformation easily available what should you eat?

FN-GBOMBS

If you ate these foods every day you would prevent most chronic conditions, lifestyle diseases and maintain your weight.

FN-GBOMBS are fruits, nuts, greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds. An acronym developed by Dr. Joel Fuhrman to help people reduce disease and promote health through their diet.

For the next 8 Mondays, I am going to post about the disease-fighting properties and benefits of each of these foods. How eating each of these regularly, if not daily, can help your health.

Fruits

Fruit is an important component of any diet. Eating a variety of fruits means that you are getting more fibre, Vitamin C, potassium, folate and antioxidants.

Fruit is high in nutrition and low in calories, making fresh, or frozen, fruit a great choice for snacks. Whole fruit is high in water and fibre, making it filling without adding too many calories. Avoid pureed fruit or fruit juices.

Many studies have shown that people eating the most fruit have lower rates of cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Eating more fruit and vegetables has also been linked with better blood sugar control in people who have type 2 diabetes.

What about sugar?

Some people might worry about the sugar content of fruit and eat less. Studies have shown that when sugar is consumed as whole fruit it has very little effect on blood sugar.

Fruit is also high in fibre which slows digestion and absorption of natural sugars and improves blood sugar control. The fibre in fruit also can reduce insulin resistance and be protective against type 2 diabetes.

Fruit contains polyphenols which have been proven to improve blood sugar control. Even people with type 2 diabetes those who eat more fruits and vegetables have lower levels of oxidative stress and inflammation.

In studies with people eating more than the recommended 5 servings a day, there were no adverse effects on eating more fruit. A systematic review of 95 scientific studies found the lowest disease risk at 800 grams or 10 daily servings of fruit and vegetables.

Apples and bananas are the most commonly eaten fruits in North America with many benefits to eating An Apple A Day.

Peaches are also popular and come with their own benefits While the links to these do contain recipes for treats, eat your fruit whole and natural for best results.

Change your mind, change your health,

Shayla