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So you've given and added bananas to your breakfast. But guess what?  A new study says most adults need to double their fruit and vegetable intake. New research published in the September issue of the British Journal of Nutrition highlights a significant shortfall in fruit and vegetable consumption in people’s diets around the world, according to newswise.com. Research finds the majority of adults worldwide would have to at least double their current consumption of fruits and vegetables to meet the World Health Organization’s minimum recommendation of five servings (400 grams) per day. Additionally, the vast majority of adults worldwide – 60 to 87% across 13 geographic diet regions – are falling short of this recommendation and missing out on crucial nutrition and health benefits. The gap between the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables and what adults are actually eating also indicates that most adults worldwide are not receiving the quantity or variety of...

My husband is not going to be happy about this, this man who every day eats apples, cherries, blueberries, spinach, and red peppers.   A new study finds that five servings of fruits and vegetables a day is still not enough. Say what?  According to the Los Angeles Times, we really should be eating seven. Eating five a day was supposed to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, obesity and Type 2 diabetes.  Scientists from the University College London who looked at data concerning fruit and vegetable consumption and mortality from a 12-year period for more than 65,000 people over the age of 35  found that participants "ate on average 3.8 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, with a serving being three ounces. Those who ate more fruit and vegetables were found to have a lower body-mass index," Jenn Harris reports.  I'm not that good either.  I try to have two vegetables at dinner and eat fruit throughout the day, but I certainly don't, al...

Can it really be?  Is McDonald's really going to offer healthy food , not just salads that, when you add the dressing and croutons, have more fat and calories than Big Macs? Looks like it might be true.  Both The New York Times and Daily Mail ran stories this week about the fast food giant's new menu that will in, three years, in some places, allow diners to swap french fries for salad, fruit or vegetables (real vegetables), something they've been doing in France (it figures) for some time, and other healthy choices. The new menus are being rolled out in 20 of the company's markets, both here and abroad, that are responsible for 85% of their sales.   The changes will take place in half  of McDonald's restaurants in three years, and the rest will roll out sometime. .  .later.  Oh, 2020. The reason they're doing this?  There're a lot, but one of the main ones is you millennials, who prefer Chipotle and Panera (me, too). What's in store?  ...

Would you believe it's as simple as an increase in breast-feeding and in the nutritional value of foods, and duh, exercise. But a story today by Cathy Payne and Michelle Healy at usatoday.com points out one more thing.  We've been listening.  The two write that, in a recent survey of more than 8,000 parents and caretakers of small children, "The percentage of infants still breast-feeding at 6 months increased to 49% in 2010 from 35% in 2000. The percent still breast-feeding at 12 months rose to 27% from 16% in 2000." That's important because the benefits to breast-fed children have long been known -- a smaller chance of becoming overweight, a better ability to fight disease, even, some say, more smarts. "One of the things that breast-feeding does, besides the possible chemistry that may affect obesity, is that it teaches babies how to eat right and how to stop eating when they're full, instead of when their mother thinks they're full. So I...

We all know that eating fruits and vegetables is good for us.  But did you know they may help us live longer, too? I don't mean just resisting diabetes and cancer and heart disease -- illnesses related to obesity that can come when you don't eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Valerie DeBenedette at Reuters reports that people who ate less than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day died earlier than those who did, and people who said they never ate fruit and vegetables "died an average of three years sooner than those who ate plenty of apples, carrots and tomatoes," researchers found in a study in Sweden. And if you eat more than five servings a day?  Sorry.  You don't get any bonus years!   Researchers studied 71,000 Swedes ages 43 to 85 for 13 years.  Nearly 11,500 of those enrolled died by 2010.  So did they all not eat their fruits and vegetables? The study found that people "who had reported eating no fruit or vegetables at the star...

It's probably not such a surprise but a new study has found that teens who don't get enough sleep also don't get enough of the right things to eat. "Well-rested teenagers tend to make more healthful food choices than their sleep-deprived peers," according to a study led by Lauren Hale, PhD, Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, as reported by newswise.com. The real value of this insight?  Doctors may now be able to figure out why sleep deprivation can lead to obesity. To me, it's pretty obvious.  When at the end of the day, I'm tired and stressed, and starving, I don't reach for an apple, I go straight for the M&Ms. Not only do sleepy teens on average eat more food that’s bad for them, they also eat less food that is good for them,” said Dr. Hale, speaking about the study results, according to the story at newswise.com . In the study those teens who said they slept fewer than seven h...

So maybe they've known something we haven't all along.   A new study has found that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters, according to The Wall Street Journal. Who's the healthiest?  The WSJ reports that a JAMA study revealed that some Seventh Day Adventists are among them.  This religious sect mostly tries to stay away from meat (and it was the one surveyed). Granted, these are only 5% of the population, the story says, but people who chose vegetables over meat  were "19% less likely to die than meat-eaters" of heart disease. "Vegetarians in the study experienced 12% fewer deaths over the period," Avery Johnson writes in the article.  Diabetes and kidney failure also killed far fewer vegetarians. The study did not include vegans, who eliminate all dairy along with meat from their diets. The jury is still out on why, but one reason may be a very obvious one --  vegetarians have diets which tend to be higher in fiber and lower in saturated ...

I may never eat corn again.  According to a story in today's New York Times Sunday Review, the supersweet corn  I wait anxiously for every summer was born in a cloud of radiation. Jo Robinson writes that we are "breeding the nutrition out of our food." As farmers and scientists try to make our food more tasty, they're often breeding out the very nutrients that make it good for us, she reports. Corn originally started out more bitter, with kernels you had to crack open with a hammer, and farmers and others started mucking around with it to come up with a more tasty version.  More on that later. Robinson says it didn't just happen with corn.  She notes that while we're all being told to eat more fruit and vegetables, a lot of the very good stuff we're supposed to get just isn't there anymore.  She gives corn as an example.  "Unwittingly, we have been stripping phytonutrients from our diet since we stopped foraging for wild plants some 10,000...

A recent study done in the UK has found that eating fruit and vegetables can make us euphoric.  Seven portions a day, that is. http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/October2FruitAndVeg2012BlanchOswaldStewartBrown.pdf

Great.  Just when kids' obesity rates are starting to come down, now we have schools deciding to cut back on the veggies, bowing to parents (parents!) and politicians. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/11/healthy-school-lunches-vegetables/1760527/