Eat your greens, reds, yellows & blues
Eating a wide variety of fruit and vegetables will ensure that you get the maximum health benefits, here's how you can do it.
Make your meal a rainbow
As a general rule, the greater the number of different colours your fruit and vegetables are, the more likely you are to be getting all of the health benefits you can. If you're finding it hard to get your recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables, try our tips below and you'll be hitting your target before you know it:
- Drink a glass of juice for breakfast, or whip up a smoothie
- Add a chopped banana or a handful of berries to your cereal or yoghurt
- Start your meals with small salad or piece of fruit
- Snack on fruit, like grapes or an apple, instead of crisps or sweets
- Aim to eat at least two kinds of vegetable with your main meal
- Make sure half of your meal is made up of vegetables
- Using a vegetable base like tomato in soups will top up your daily portions
Stay away from smoke!
Pollution and smoking can cause free radicals, which may play a role in the development of heart disease, diseases related to the circulatory system, and skin-ageing. Every puff of a cigarette exposes your lungs and the rest of your body to large amounts of damaging radicals. Water will help to flush out your system, but it won't do much to give your body added strength to combat the effects of all that pollution.
Fruit and vegetables seem to work more powerfully together than alone in fighting off free radicals. Although juice will give you some of the vitamins and minerals you need, you'll benefit from least two extra portions of whole fruit and vegetables and after you have been exposed to any kind smoke. If your diet is full of a diverse range of fruit and vegetables, you're probably providing your body with a full range of antioxidants. The greater the selection, the easier it is for your body to find the ones it needs most.
