100 Kinds of Fruits and 100 Kinds of Vegetables
FRUITS
&
VEGETABLES
I recommend making fruits and vegetables the majority of your diet, and below are my thoughts on these amazing foods.
FRUITS
WHAT ARE FRUITS?
Fruits are the often sweet tasting foods that grow on trees and plants and that contain the seeds of the future generation of the tree or plant that they grow on, and most fruits begin their life as a flower. (An apple tree for example will produce flowers in the spring, and the flowers that get pollinated will slowly transform into apples.)
VARIETY
There are 100 different types of fruits listed above, and this is by no means a complete list of all the fruits that are out there.
As a matter of fact, there are nearly 10,000 different varieties of apples in the world alone!
And even the same variety of a fruit can be very different depending on where, when, and how it was grown.
So you can definitely get a lot of variety from fruits, and I would encourage you to try a fruit that you've never tried before whenever the opportunity to do so presents itself.
WHY I BELIEVE THAT FRUIT IS THE MOST NATURAL FOOD FOR HUMANS
1. "SWEET TOOTH"
The reason that so many people drink sugary sodas, eat sugary candy, and crave a sugary desert after a meal, is because they don't eat enough natural sugar from fruit to satisfy their natural desire for sweets, so their body is constantly seeking out some kind of sugary substitute to fill that void, and if you start increasing the amount of fruit in your diet, your desire to consume other forms of sugar will naturally start decreasing.
2. DIGESTION
Some foods take hours to digest, while most fruits only take minutes to digest, and this is because fruits are mostly made of water and fiber.
If you put an apple in 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 at that point is a tiny collection of sugar crystals and other nutrients that would be hard to see without a microscope.
So when you eat fruit, you are mostly consuming "water" and "fiber". And since "water" is the best remedy for "dehydration" and since "fiber" is the best remedy for "constipation", your digestion will naturally be a lot faster and smoother when you are eating plenty of fruit.
In fact, some fruits are so easy to digest that you 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 you rub it into your skin, the juice can actually get absorbed through your skin!)
3. OUR NATURAL ABILITITES
* 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.
Like any other life-form, the goal of a fruit tree is to multiply and keep its species going, but because a fruit tree is stationary and can't travel, it means that if all of it's fruits simply fall to the ground and remain under its branches, they will be in the shade and won't be able to grow due to a lack of sunlight.
Humans and animals on the other hand, are able to travel great distances, so in order to spread their seeds far and wide, fruit trees will intentionally produce good looking, good smelling, and good tasting fruits to make us to want to eat them.
Most fruit seeds are small enough that they can easily be swallowed by animals, and they are also hard enough that they can travel through an animal's digestive track unharmed and then come back out of the animal in a new location and encased in the fertilizer that they need to grow!
3 TIPS FOR GETTING GOOD QUALITY FRUITS
1. "MAKE SURE THEY'RE ORGANIC"
If you think that it would be a waste of time and money to seek out "organic" produce, I would agree with you 100% if the only fruits and vegetables that you ever eat are the 2 slices of pickles that you get in a McDonald's cheeseburger. But if you are following the diet that I recommend, and almost everything that you eat comes from the produce department, then the quality of produce that you are eating is going to be a lot 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 these poison over time has been linked to many serious and even fatal health problems in humans.
The diet that I recommend is based on eating "living foods", so eating foods that have been sprayed with a "death agent" is definitely not something that I recommend doing.
2. "MAKES SURE THEY'RE IN SEASON"
Now-a-days, there are few fruits that you can't find at the supermarket all year long.
Watermelon used to be a fruit that you could only enjoy in the summertime, but now you can buy a watermelon in the middle of the winter if you want to. Keep in mind though, that the watermelons that are grown in the winter are grown in "hot houses" and they won't be as delicious or nutritious as a watermelon that is actually grown outdoors during "watermelon season". (Plus, they will be more expensive since it's harder to grow fruits when they are out-of-season.)
It would be best to only eat fruits during their natural growing seasons, and although eating this way may mean having to wait a long time for your favorite fruits to come back in season, the "delayed gratification" will help you to appreciate these fruits even more once they return, and there is always something good that is currently in season.
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 able to grow, and it is also when the fruit itself is fully developed and going to be the most nutritious for us.
- When fruits are unripe, they are green like the leaves surrounding them. (Which camouflages them and makes them difficult to find.) And as fruits ripen, they become bright and colorful. (Which makes them stand out and very easy to find.)
- When fruits are unripe, they are smaller and higher up in the tree. (Which makes them hard 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 their fruits to us.)
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, rather than waiting until they are actually ripe, and they do this for the following 3 reasons...
- If they picked their fruits when they were "ripe", they would be "over ripe" by the time they got to the grocery stores.
- If they picked their fruits when they were fully ripe, the fruits would be soft and therefore fragile and a lot more prone to damage during shipping and handling compared to fruits that were picked when they were still hard and unripe.
- If they picked their fruits when they were fully ripe, they would lose an enormous amount of time and money, because it is far easier to have a scheduled time for fruits to be picked, shipped, and delivered, than it would be to have to wait patiently for as long as it takes for the fruits to be just right for picking, shipping, and delivering.
Keep in mind though that certain fruits (like bananas, mangoes, and avocados) will continue to ripen after they have been picked, while other fruits (like grapes, berries, and oranges) won't continue to ripen after they have been picked. (An unripe green banana can still ripen and turn yellow on your kitchen counter, while an unripe pale strawberry that was picked too early will never be able to ripen and turn bright red.)
The term for fruits that can ripen after they have been picked is "climacteric fruits" and the term for fruits that can't ripen after they have been picked is "non-climacteric fruits". So if you aren't sure if a certain type of fruit will ripen or not after being picked, you can easily figure it out on-line by looking up if the fruit in question is classified as a "climacteric" or "non-climacteric" fruit.
VEGETABLES
WHAT ARE VEGETABLES?
Unlike fruits (which grow on trees and plants) vegetables are the edible parts of the tree and plant itself, 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 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 will mean that your diet will be limited to nothing but vegetables. (And more specifically the vegetables that most people don't enjoy eating.) And they will do this by making statements 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."
The truth is that vegetables are just one part of a healthy diet, and there are a lot of different vegetables to choose from. So if you say that you don't like vegetables, my first question to you would be, "Have you tried them all?"
There are 100 different types of vegetables listed above, and this is by no means a complete list of all the vegetables that are out there.
As a matter of fact, there may even be some edible and even medicinal plants in your own backyard that you have always though of as nothing more than pesky "weeds".
So you can definitely get a lot of variety from vegetables, and I would encourage you to try a vegetable that you've never had before whenever the opportunity to do so presents itself.
There is also a big difference between vegetables that are actually fresh and vegetables that are canned or frozen and that were picked months or even years ago.
And before you try a new vegetable for the first time, I would encourage you to watch a tutorial video on YouTube demonstrating how to prepare and eat that vegetable, because it could very well make the difference between 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
There are countless people who claim that drinking green vegetable juice did amazing things for their health, and making yourself a fresh glass of green juice once a day would be a great way to start getting more greens in your diet.
If you're new to juicing, green vegetable juice will probably taste too bitter for you at first, so when you first start juicing, you may wish to sweeten up the juice by juicing some apples or carrots with the greens until you eventually start to enjoy the taste of green juice that you no longer need the added sweeteners.
But before you decide to get a juice machine, you need to know that the average juicer is only capable of juicing things that are big and juicy like apples and oranges, and that it won't be powerful enough to juice thin leaves like spinach and kale.
However, you can still make "cucumber juice" and "celery juice" in a regular juice machine because of how big and juicy cucumbers and celery are, and honestly, I think that "cucumber juice" and "celery juice" are some of the best green juices you can drink!
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 SALADS
Most people actually enjoy eating salads, but the salad dressings that they pour on top of them will usually contain a lot of unhealthy ingredients which causes the salads to no longer be "healthy".
Fortunately, if you have a blender, you can actually make make amazing salad dressings without dairy, without oils, without chemicals, and with only healthy ingredients.
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"
3. GREEN SMOOTHIES
Certain types of bitter greens (like spinach, celery, and kale) will actually combine very well with certain types of sweet fruits (like bananas, mangoes, and berries) and if you blend them together in a smoothie, the sweetness of the fruit will overpower the bitterness of the vegetables. (Which means that you won't really taste the vegetables, but you will still be getting them in your diet!)
Smoothies are especially helpful if you have children who refuse to eat vegetables, because it's so easy to "hide" healthy ingredients in smoothies. And they can also be incredibly 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"
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