Trumping the Nutrients in Today's Fruits and Veggies
The USDA recommends that you eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. These do make an important part of your diet. But there's something the USDA is leaving out...
Comprehensive data (also from the U.S. government) indicate that America's vegetables and fruits are not nearly as nutritious as they once were.1
Nature is no longer selecting your fruits and veggies for their ability to survive which requires that they acquire and store nutrients. Big industry now selects and hybridizes your produce for maximum weight or for color or flavor. While that may make for a pretty fruit basket, it's not exactly a recipe for peak nutrition.
Today, you'll read about a different category of nutritious whole foods made of ancient organisms that may revive our lost nutrients - Green Foods.
Green Foods include families of algae and other primitive plants. They're appropriately named for the one element they all have in common - chlorophyll, the substance that makes green foods, well... green.
Most of my patients haven't heard of them. Yet, green foods offer remarkable and universal benefits.
Go Green for Energy
Green foods offer a wealth of health benefits from increased levels of energy, to antioxidant protection, to aiding in detoxification. And studies have shown that they:
Help reduce bad cholesterol and triglycerides.
Detoxify the liver and digestive tract.
Stimulate the production of hemoglobin, which oxygenates and energizes the body.2
Build immunity.
Protect your body from free radicals and toxins.
Fight strep and staph infections.3
In fact, a recent study confirmed that chlorophyll-rich foods can even help you avoid colon cancer.4
And here's another thing: Green foods are different from mainstream vitamin and mineral supplements because they are not synthetic isolated compounds-they are whole food sources of nutrition. They're better absorbed by your digestive system than synthetic supplements.
A Winning Shade of Green
To make sure your body gets all of the green food it needs, use a combination of spirulina and wheat grass. This provides an exceptionally nutrient rich blend. It packs all of the benefits of green foods into one package:
Antioxidants
Vitamins
Minerals
Fiber
Carotenoids
So for best results, supplement your diet rich with green foods - spirulina, wheat grass, barley grass, blue-green algae. You can get them at health food stores and juice bars.
As a word of caution, it's best to introduce them slowly. If you take too much initially, it could cause rapid detoxification, which may lead to headaches, nausea, and irritability.5
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1. "Fruits, Vegetables Not as Nutritious as 50 Years Ago," Scripps Howard News Service, 3/26/2006
2. "GreatLife" magazine, September 1999, Vol.2 No.9
3. Steve Meyerowitz. "Beyond Broccoli the 'New' Green Foods," Better Nutrition. May 1999; volume 51 (5): pg. 56-61
4."Green Vegetables May Decrease Risk of Colon Cancer," Medical Devices & Surgical Technology Week. 04/24/2005, pg. 109
5. Steven Schecter. "Nutrient-dense Green Foods: Mining the Motherlode," Better Nutrition. June 1998; volume 60 (6): pg. 16
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Trumping the Nutrients in Today's Fruits and Veggies
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