Fruits and Vegetables
FRUITS
&
VEGETABLES
I recommend making fruits and vegetables the majority of your diet and below are my thoughts on these wonderful foods.
FRUITS
WHAT ARE FRUITS?
Fruits typically taste sweet and grow on trees and plants.
Fruits typically contain the seeds of the tree or plant that they grow on.
Fruits typically begin their life as flowers. (An apple tree for example will produce flowers in the spring, and the flowers that get pollinated by the birds and the bees will slowly turn into apples over the summer and will then be ready to eat in the fall.)
WHY I BELIEVE THAT FRUIT IS THE MOST NATURAL FOOD FOR HUMANS
1. WE NATURALLY HAVE A "SWEET TOOTH"
The reason that so many people drink sugary sodas, eat sugary candy, and crave a sugary dessert after a meal is that they aren't consuming enough fruit to satisfy their natural desire for "sweets". So their body is constantly seeking some kind of sugary substitute to fill that void, and if they start to increase the amount of sweet fruit in their diet, their cravings for unhealthy sweets would naturally start to decrease.
2. OUR DIGESTION
If you put an apple through a juice machine and remove the fiber, you will be left with apple juice. And if you then take that apple juice and put it in a dehydrator to remove the water, all that will be left will be a tiny collection of sugar crystals and micro-nutrients that you would need a microscope to see.
So in other words, when you eat fruit you are mostly consuming "water" and "fiber". And since "water" is the best remedy for "dehydration", and "fiber" is the best remedy for "constipation", your digestion will naturally be a lot smoother when you are eating plenty of fruit.
And believe it or not, some fruits are so easy for us to digest, that we technically don't even have to eat them to digest them. (If you take a piece of juicy fruit like mango, honeydew, or watermelon and rub it into your skin, the juice can actually get absorbed into your body through your skin!)
3. OUR NATURAL ABILITIES
Humans have the natural ability to easily reach up and pick an apple off a tree, but it would be very challenging for us to catch, kill, and eat a wild animal.
Lions have the natural ability to easily catch, kill, and eat a wild animal, but it would be very challenging for them to reach up and pick an apple off a tree.
4. OUR SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH FRUIT TREES
Like any other life form, the goal of a fruit tree is to spread its seeds far and wide so it can be "fruitful" and multiply. But because fruit trees are stationary, they needs some help with this.
Humans and animals can travel great distances, so fruit trees will produce good-looking, good-smelling, and good-tasting fruits to make us want to eat them so we will spread their seeds for them.
Most fruit seeds are small enough that they can easily be swallowed by humans and animals, and they are also hard enough that they can travel through the digestive tract unharmed and then be deposited in a new location encased in the fertilizer that they need to grow!
3 TIPS FOR GETTING GOOD QUALITY FRUITS
1. MAKE SURE THEY'RE ORGANIC
If you don't think that it's necessary to seek out "organic" produce, I would agree with you if the only produce you ever eat is the 2 slices of pickles that are in a McDonald's cheeseburger. But if you are following the diet that I recommend and almost everything you eat is produce, then the quality of the produce that you are eating is going to be far more important.
Because of our size, we aren't going to die from eating an apple that has been sprayed with pesticides like a small insect might. But consuming small doses of toxic poisons over time is how a lot of our physical and mental health problems can creep up on us.
The diet that I recommend is based on eating "living foods", so eating foods that have been sprayed with a "death agent" isn't something that I would recommend if you can avoid it.
2. MAKES SURE THEY'RE IN SEASON
Nowadays, a lot of fruits can be found in grocery stores all year long.
Watermelon for example used to be a fruit that we could only eat in the summertime, but now we can go to the store and buy watermelon in the middle of the winter if we want.
Keep in mind though that watermelons that are grown in the winter are grown in "hot houses", and they won't be as delicious or nutritious as watermelons that were actually grown outdoors during "watermelon season". (Plus they will cost more since it's harder to grow fruits when they are out of season.)
It would be best to only eat fruits when they are in season. And although eating this way will mean having to wait for your favorite fruits to come back in season, this "delayed gratification" will help you to appreciate your favorite fruits even more when they finally return.
Plus, there is always something that's currently in season, so please enjoy what is currently at its best!
Click HERE to view some online charts of seasonal fruits.
3. MAKE SURE THEY'RE RIPE
Fruit trees want us to eat their fruits. But they only want us to eat their fruits when they are ripe. (Because that is when the seeds inside of them are fully developed and ready to be planted.)
- When fruits are unripe, they are green like the leaves surrounding them. (Which camouflages them and makes them difficult to see.) And as fruits ripen, they become bright and colorful. (Which makes them stand out and easy to see.)
- When fruits are unripe, they have virtually no smell. (Which makes them hard to detect even by animals with strong senses of smell.) And as fruits ripen, they become fragrant. (Which makes them easy to detect and attracts natural fruit eaters to them like a magnet.)
- When fruits are unripe, they are higher up in the tree. (Which makes them difficult to reach.) And as fruits ripen, they become bigger and heavier. (Which causes the branches of the tree to hang lower as if the trees are literally handing us their fruits.)
Unripe fruit is less nutritious than fruit that is ripe and fully developed, and one of the biggest problems with buying fruit at a grocery store is that most large-scale fruit growers will pick their fruits when they are still unripe, and they do this for the following reasons...
- If they picked their fruits when they were ripe, the fruits would be "over-ripe" by the time they got to the stores.
- If they picked their fruits when they were ripe, the fruits would be soft. (Making them fragile and more prone to damage during shipping and handling than fruits that are still hard and unripe.)
- If they picked their fruits when they were ripe, they would lose a lot of time and money, because it's far more convenient to have a scheduled time for all of their fruits to be picked and shipped than it is to wait patiently for as long as it takes for each fruit to be "just right" for picking.
But it's important to know that some fruits will continue to ripen after they have been picked while others won't. (An unripe green banana can still ripen and turn yellow on your kitchen counter, but an unripe pale strawberry will never be able to ripen and turn bright red.)
Click HERE to view some online charts of which fruits can and can't ripen after being picked and keep this information in mind when buying fruits.
VEGETABLES
WHAT ARE VEGETABLES?
Unlike fruit (which grow on trees and plants) vegetables are the edible parts of the trees and plants themselves, and some examples of this include...
- The Leaves (Spinach)
- The Roots (Potatoes)
- The Flowers (Cauliflower)
- The Stems (Asparagus)
- The Bulbs (Onions)
- The Bark (Cinnamon)
- The Tree (Heart of Palm)
- The Grass (Wheatgrass Juice)
WHAT IF YOU DON'T LIKE VEGETABLES?
Critics of healthy eating will often try to convince everyone (including themselves) that becoming a vegetarian or a vegan would mean having to eat nothing but vegetables. (And more specifically, the vegetables that most people don't enjoy eating.)
And they will do this by saying things like...
"I could never be a vegetarian, because I couldn't eat nothing but broccoli and kale all day."
or
"I could never be a vegan because I don't want to have to live on nothing but tree bark and grass for the rest of my life."
But the truth is that vegetables are just one part of a healthy diet, and there are a lot of different vegetables to choose from...
There are 100 different types of vegetables listed above, and the odds are that there are a lot of vegetables out there that you've never tried or never even heard of before.
So before you say that vegetables aren't for you, I would encourage you to start trying some vegetables that you've never had before. (And if you don't know much about a particular vegetable, please watch a tutorial video on YouTube showing how to prepare and eat that vegetable first, because it may make the difference between you having a bad first impression of that vegetable and a great one!)
3 WAYS TO GET A LOT MORE "GREEN STUFF" IN YOUR DIET
1. GREEN JUICES
So many people have claimed that green juice did miraculous things for their health that giving yourself a daily glass of green juice may be a great way to start getting some greens in your diet.
If green juice is too bitter for you at first, you can add things to it like apple juice or carrot juice to make it sweeter and more palatable until you eventually start to crave pure green juice.
To watch countless free videos on how to make green juice at home, simply go to YouTube and type in "Green Juice Recipes"
2. GREEN SMOOTHIES
Certain types of bitter greens (like spinach) combine well with certain types of sweet fruits (like bananas) and if you blend them together into a "green smoothie" the sweetness of the fruit will overpower the bitterness of the greens. (Which means that you won't taste the vegetables as much, but you will still be getting them in your diet.)
Smoothies are especially helpful if you have young children who refuse to eat vegetables because it's so easy to "hide" healthy ingredients in smoothies. And smoothies are also helpful if you are a grown-up who still struggles with eating enough vegetables ;)
To watch countless free videos on how to make green smoothies at home, simply go to YouTube and type in "Green Smoothie Recipes"
3. GREEN SALADS
Most people actually enjoy eating salads, but they will pour unhealthy salad dressing on them that causes the salads to no longer be very "healthy".
If you have a blender, you can make healthy salad dressings at home that don't contain any dairy, oil, sugar, salt, or chemical additives that are typically found in store-bought salad dressings.
To watch countless free videos on how to make your own healthy salad dressings at home, simply go to YouTube and type in "Raw Vegan Salad Dressing Recipes"
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