A fruit is defined as the edible part of a plant that consists of the seeds and surrounding tissues, while vegetables are plants cultivated for their edible parts. Fruits and vegetables are important sources of micronutrients and dietary fibres and are components of a healthy diet, which help in preventing major diseases. Due to the fact that fruits and vegetables have health promoting properties, they contribute to dietary guidance. This chapter defines the basic concepts related to health benefits of fruits and vegetables, reviews the previous literature on health benefits of fruits and vegetables and enumerates the health benefits of some common fruits and vegetables. It also examined the dietary recommendation of fruits and vegetables in less developed countries as well as present situation of fruits and vegetables consumption with particular reference to sub-Saharan Africa.

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Globally, hunger and poverty are major challenges with number of household malnourished increasing daily. Conscious integration of the home gardens strategy into peri-urban and urban development can help to achieve food security. In this regard, a total of 412 questionnaires were administered to home garden owners around the National Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT) in Ibadan (Southwest Nigeria), Mbato (Southeast Nigeria), Bagauda (Northwest Nigeria) and Dadinkowa (Northeast Nigeria). In all, 366 (88.8%) questionnaires were found suitable for analysis. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistical analytical tools. Majority of people involved in the practice of home gardening were male (78%) and young <50 years (53%), implying that they were capable of handling more tedious activities than the female and the elderly respectively. Land and house ownership were found to be the most important factor in home gardening. Goat (77.1%), sheep (58.7%) and local fowl (49.7%) were the dominant livestock in the areas investigated.Most of the livestock were fed with household waste and crop residues which ought to have caused great problem through microbial build up, while the animal wastes were usually incorporated into the soil to serve as soil amendments. Some of the livestock owners were also mindful of zoonosis.

Horticultural crops refer to fruits, vegetables, spices, and ornamental and medicinal plants which are rich sources of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Rapid urbanization and migration of rural populace to the more industrialized city center has led to poverty, malnutrition, low and insecure incomes, ill-health and other livelihood problems. These problems are mostly seen among the people residing in urban areas who have migrated from rural areas. Urban horticulture ensures food and nutrition security, healthy environment and sustainable livelihoods, employment generation, among others. As such, this chapter carried out an empirical review of the state of urban horticulture in cities across sub-Sahara Africa. This is to enumerate ways whereby the benefits of urban horticulture can be specified in the region. It concluded that governments in the different countries need the political will to actualize identified benefits of urban horticulture. The chapter then recommends sensitization of the pertinent stakeholders in countries across sub-Saharan Africa on the benefits of urban horticulture. Such stakeholders include politicians, policy makers and urban households. This is in order to integrate the concept into urban land use planning while carefully considering sustainability of the environment.

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Agriculture is central in order to achieve nutrition goals through the provision of food, energy and essential micronutrients for the physical and mental development of humans. Dietary diversity is a good indicator of human food security status. Using a dataset obtained from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), this paper examines the linkages between crop diversity and food security (measured as dietary diversity) among farming households in Nigeria using ordinary least squares, Poisson regression, and instrumental variables (IV) Poisson regression to estimate the relationship. In addition, we investigate the determinants that lead to the consumption of each food groups considered for generating dietary diversity using a logit regression model. The results show that food expenditure, asset ownership and location of households are the key factors driving the types of food consumed by the households. Furthermore, increased food expenditure and access to credit were found to positively influence food security. The result established a positive and significant relationship between crop diversity and dietary diversity. Our findings call for more attention to diet diversity, as well as the need to harmonize the roles of rural income improvement, especially through non-farm livelihood diversification in tackling multiple nutritional deficiencies in Nigeria.