Mar 1st 2022

Energize with Fresh Fruits and Vegetables

"Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food." - Hippocrates

Do your meals leave you feeling light and full of vitality, or do they weigh you down, making you feel sleepy and dull?

Although all food supplies calories, how well your body utilizes those calories to provide you with energy depends on the "life force" in the foods you eat. And foods vary widely along a continuum in this respect, from producing vitality, rejuvenation and healing to sapping your energy, adding unwanted weight and contributing to premature aging and disease.

Food also influences mood and mental abilities, from raising your spirits, making you optimistic and heightening your awareness and mental function to bringing you down and dulling your brain.

A number of factors determine a food's vibration or life force. Overall, foods are most energizing and health-promoting when they're consumed raw, or as close as possible to their natural state. This gives pride of place to the multicolored fruits and vegetables, which delight the eye as well as the palate and can be eaten raw or lightly steamed.

Adding Fruit and Vegetables to Your Diet

The Western-type diet (WTD) is the reverse of what it should be for optimal health and energy: low in fruits and vegetables and high in fat, sugar, salt and processed foods. This WTD has been linked with increased inflammation, lowered immunity and all manner of chronic, degenerative disease, like heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Fresh vegetables with some fruit should be the centerpiece of our diet. Beyond Health recommends limiting fruit to two pieces a day: Although fruits offer a host of nutritional benefits, they're high in fruit sugar, a.k.a. fructose. People with insulin resistance and other blood sugar problems, as well as those dealing with yeast infections, may need to restrict fruit further due to its sugar content.

How Fruits and Vegetables Benefit and Energize Your Body

Alkalizing Your Body

The pH (acid-alkaline balance) of our blood and of the fluid inside our cells is critical to health. The typical Western processed food diet is highly acidifying, as are all animal proteins and grains. Most of us today are too acidic, and this affects the ability of our cells to produce energy, causing fatigue and making our bodies less resilient and less able to maintain and repair themselves. Fruits and vegetables have a welcome alkalizing effect.

Reducing Systemic Inflammation

If aches and pains are slowing you down, it's not because you're "just getting old" - it's because you're suffering from chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation, which can cause pain and fatigue, is a sign of incomplete body repair. Diets high in fruits and vegetables are anti-inflammatory. They curb excess inflammation while helping to heal the underlying chronic repair deficits which give rise to it.

Providing Dietary Fiber

More than 95% of the U.S. population doesn't get enough dietary fiber, the indigestible component of plant foods that provides the bulk in our diets that moves food along the GI tract and prevents constipation. When food stays in your colon too long, it rots and produces toxins that get into your bloodstream and tire you.

But fiber does something even more important than keeping us regular: It feeds the roughly three to five pounds of helpful bacteria (probiotics) living in our intestines, keeping them happy and healthy. And, when the gut probiotics are happy and healthy, they assist in...

Supporting Your Immunity

Up to 80% of your immune system is located in your intestines, where probiotics play a major role in keeping you free from infections. Chronic low-level infections are a major energy drain in many people.

Providing Polyphenols

In addition to supplying vitamins and minerals, fruits and vegetables are a rich source of antioxidant compounds called polyphenols. Over 10,000 different polyphenols have been identified in plant foods. Polyphenols protect plants from oxidative stress caused by the sun's UV rays, and by environmental pollution and pathogens.

Humans who eat fruits and vegetables get many of the same benefits from the polyphenols they contain, including detoxification and protection from the energy- and health-destroying toll taken by oxidative stress.

To maximize the life force in your fruits and vegetables, buy organic, and eat them as fresh and unprocessed as possible.

Resources for Adding Fruits and Vegetables to Your Diet

We've periodically been adding some tips for getting more fruits and vegetables into your diet. Continue checking back as we grow our list of resources:

"How to Include More Fresh Produce in Your Diet," Part I and Part II: Get ideas for recipes, from smoothies and juicing to understanding how to approach cruciferous vegetables.
"Why the Food Gurus Love Berries": From antioxidants and fiber to disease-fighting properties, understand the full scope of health benefits berries add to your diet.

Health exists along a continuum, from near-death all the way to bursting-with-energy optimal health, and everything we do moves us one way or the other along that continuum. Dramatically increasing the amount of fresh, organic and mostly raw fruits and vegetables in your diet is one way to take some giant steps towards optimal health and make a major improvement in your energy!

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