Health Benefits of Fruits and Vegetables

Slavin, Joanne L.; Lloyd, Beate

doi:10.3945/an.112.002154

Cited by 1,624 publications

(1,177 citation statements)

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“…Fruits and vegetables are excellent sources of dietary fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C and folate, and vegetables can contain significant quantities of iron and calcium (Slavin & Lloyd 2012). Fruits and vegetables also supply phytochemicals with proven health benefits, including antioxidants and phytoestrogens (Slavin & Lloyd 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest foods and healthy diets: quantifying the contributions

Rowland

Ickowitz²,

Powell

et al. 2016

Envir. Conserv.

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SUMMARYForested landscapes provide a source of micronutrient rich food for millions of people around the world. A growing evidence base suggests these foods may be of great importance to the dietary quality of people living in close proximity to forests -especially in communities with poor access to markets. Despite widespread evidence of the consumption of forest foods around the world, to date, few studies have attempted to quantify the nutritional contributions these foods make. In this study we tested the hypothesis that the consumption of forest foods can make important contributions to dietary quality. We investigated the dietary contributions of wild forest foods in smallholder dominated forested landscapes from 37 sites in 24 tropical countries, using data from the Poverty and Environment Network (PEN). We compared quantities of forest foods consumed by households with dietary recommendations and national average consumption patterns. In addition, we compared the relative importance of forests and smallholder agriculture in supplying fruits, vegetables, meat and fish for household consumption. More than half of the households in our sample collected forest foods for their own consumption, though consumption patterns were skewed towards low-quantity users. For high-quantity consuming households, however, forest foods made a substantial contributions to their diets. The top quartile of forest food users in each site obtained 14.8% of the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables, and 106% of the reference quantity of meat and fish from forests. In 13 sites, the proportion of meat and fish coming from forests was greater than from domestic livestock and aquaculture, while in 11 sites, households procured a greater proportion of fruits and vegetables from forests than from agriculture. Given high levels of heterogeneity in forest food consumption, we identify four forest food use site typologies to * Correspondence: Amy Ickowitz e-mail: A.Ickowitz@cgiar.org characterize the different use patterns: 'forest food dependent', 'limited forest food use', 'forest food supplementation' and 'specialist forest food consumer' sites. Our results suggest that while forest foods do not universally contribute significantly to diets, in some sites where large quantities of forest foods are consumed, their contribution towards dietary adequacy is substantial.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest foods and healthy diets: quantifying the contributions

Rowland

Ickowitz²,

Powell

et al. 2016

Envir. Conserv.

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“…Given this it is no wonder that across a range of countries (e.g. Canada, the UK, the United States) the recommended daily guide is to consume four to six portions of fruits and vegetables per day (Slavin & Lloyd, 2012). However, increasingly, low energy density foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables are being replaced by high fat, high sugar, snack, drink and meal products, which may lead to increased obesity and its related disorders (Kaufman, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attentional biases towards familiar and unfamiliar foods in children. The role of food neophobia

Maratos

Staples

2015

Appetite

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“…Clearly, the diversity of the total bioavailable dietary plant natural products and metabolites thereof remains unknown and varies with diet, culture, and lifestyle [58]. While numerous and, in part, conflicting health claims about food-derived vegetable antioxidants and fatty acids have been made [59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68], there is no doubt that the use of dietary plants coevolved with the mammalian diet within a food-medicine continuum [30][31][32][33]. The intriguing question is why humans eat what they eat, and how this may affect health and fitness through selection and epigenetic mechanisms [14,15,[69][70][71].…”

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confidence: 99%

The Metabolic Plant Feedback Hypothesis: How Plant Secondary Metabolites Nonspecifically Impact Human Health

Gertsch

2016

Planta Med

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Humans can ingest gram amounts of plant secondary metabolites daily through diet. Many of these phytochemicals are bioactive beyond our current understanding because they act through weak negative biological feedback mechanisms, undetectable in vitro. Homeostatic-type assessments shed light on the evolutionary implications of the human diet from plants, giving rise to the metabolic plant feedback hypothesis. The hypothesis states that ancient diets rich in carbohydrates coincide with bulk dietary phytochemicals that act as nonspecific inhibitors of metabolic and inflammatory processes. Consequently, food-derived phytochemicals are likely to be equally effective as herbal medicines for these indications. In addition to the ubiquitous flavonoids, terpenoids, and fatty acids in the diet, the likely impact of chronic chlorophyll ingestion on human health is discussed, and data on its modulation of blood glucose levels are presented. A major deduction of this hypothesis is that starchy diets lacking plant secondary metabolites are associated with multimorbidity (lifestyle diseases) including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. It is proposed that the intake of leafy vegetables, spices, and herbal remedies rich in phytochemicals matches the transition and genetic adaptation to early agriculture, playing a compensatory role in the mismatch of old genes and new diets.

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Health Benefits of Fruits and Vegetables

Cited by 1,624 publications

References 50 publications

Forest foods and healthy diets: quantifying the contributions

Forest foods and healthy diets: quantifying the contributions

Attentional biases towards familiar and unfamiliar foods in children. The role of food neophobia

The Metabolic Plant Feedback Hypothesis: How Plant Secondary Metabolites Nonspecifically Impact Human Health

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