Fresh fruit and vegetables-
Eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day urges the UK Government. In Australia the recommendation is 11 portions. Yet have you ever wondered how come the problems we are trying to overcome are still so prevalent and not disappearing even though we are eating more fruit and vegetables? Is it that we are not eating the right fruit and vegetables? Or is it simply a function of an aging population? It is now beginning to appear that it is neither of these reasons but something much more fundamental.
Much of the work that lead to these recommendations was based upon observations that people who ate a diet rich in fresh fruit and vegetables had a lower incidence of modern day problems than existed in the population which consumed our modern day diet. Yet little attention has been paid to the actual sources from which these fresh fruit and vegetables foods came.
Take the Mediterranean diet for example, where olive oil is thought to be particularly beneficial. Traditionally, olive oil was made from stone ground organic olives and is cloudy in nature with a slightly spicy/tangy flavour. Compare that with today’s offering which even though it may be organic is usually refined and clear with little of the traditional flavour.
Then consider the French Red Wine Paradox which intrigued everyone with its claimed health benefits for a while. Traditionally, French wine is made from organically grown grapes, and the wine is fermented on the grape skin so that trace ingredients in the grape skin are extracted into the wine through this process. Very different from some modern methods of wine production which ferment grape juice in the absence of the skins.
Is there a theme beginning to come through here? Organic, traditional methods of food production from traditional varieties of food sources?
Have you ever wondered why even our fresh food tastes so bland? Is there something missing which we don’t yet know about?
Our sense of taste is a remarkable phenomenon. It can detect the presence of minute traces of chemically complex ingredients in our food and either alert us not to eat a food because it is dangerous or encourage us to eat something because it is “good for us”.
But, what if the beneficial ingredients in our fresh fruit and vegetables that we detect by taste are present at such low levels that they had been overlooked all the time by scientists as being beneficial?
More importantly, what if these beneficial substances were being removed from our diet as a result of modern day food production and processing?
And what if a very critical process in the cells of the body depended on these natural plant based food ingredients?
Might this explain the reason why the benefits of our increased intake of fruit and vegetables is not as powerful as predicted?
Well, this is exactly what is happening and the complex process by which the body uses these substances has now for the first time been unravelled. Amazingly, it first evolved in mammals 150 million years ago and harnessed the benefits of a richly diverse plant diet to help act as a protector in the body against the problems which today are so prevalent.