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Many medical experts stress the importance of consuming fruits and vegetables. They provide our bodies with vitamins, nutrients, fibers, and lack notoriously unhealthy fats and saturated sugars.
Many non-experts have also put together sayings along the line of “you are what you eat”, meaning that fruits and vegetables are full of life and energy and fill people up with the same attitude, while meat comes from something dead and is more likely to make someone less energetic and positive.
What’s more, we keep hearing that we live in a time when most people are well educated, health-conscious consumers who are interested in buying natural products that are healthy for their bodies. So you would assume that there’s a huge wave of change in the dietary habits of Americans. But things may not be changing quite that quickly.
A new study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has found that most of us are in dire need of a lifestyle change as no more than one in five (1 in 5) Americans consume the amount of fruits and vegetables recommended by the government dietary suggestions – ideally people should consume somewhere between 1.5 and 2 cups of fruit each day, and somewhere between 2 and 3 cups of vegetables each day.
The experts did admit the consummation rate of fruits and vegetables varies from state to state, but on average, 87 percent (87%) of United States citizens don’t eat enough fruit, while 91 percent (91%) of United States residents don’t eat enough citizens.
California is one of the happier cases, with 13 percent (13%) of the state residents consuming an acceptable amount of vegetables each day, while Mississippi is one of the more unfortunate cases, with only 6 percent (6%) of the state residents consuming an acceptable amount of vegetables each day.
Eighteen percent (18%) of California residents also consume an acceptable amount of fruit each day, while only 8 percent (8%) of Tennessee residents consume an acceptable amount of fruit each day.
For their study, the researchers looked at a 2013 survey that examined the dietary habits of 373.000 American adults across the 50 states.
The overall results showed that only 13 percent (13%) of the subjects consumed the fruit amount recommended by the government dietary suggestions, and only 9 percent (9%) of the subjects consumed the vegetable amount recommended by the government dietary suggestions.
The researchers concluded that since fruits and vegetable consumption rates are so low across the 50 states, and they affect so many different health outcomes, the medical community need to continue their efforts to increase the demand and consumption of these products.
They suggest that in order to change the behavior in adults, experts should focus on children who tend to avoid fruits and vegetables. By education young people and getting them used to adopting a healthy diet early in life, experts believe that they will grow up maintaining this healthy diet.
The logic seems sound on the surface, but there’s just one problem with it – many people claim not to enjoy the taste of fruits and vegetables, especially the latter.
The findings were published on Friday, July 10, 2015, in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Image Source: rosannadavisonnutrition.com
