CDC: Too few eating fruits, vegetables...
By DANIEL YEE, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 15, 6:22 PM ET
Fewer than a third of American adults eat the amount of fruits and vegetables the government recommends, a trend that's remained steady for more than a decade, health officials said Thursday. That's "well below" the government's goal of getting 75 percent of Americans to eat two servings of fruits and having half of the population consume three servings of vegetables each day by 2010, said Dr. Larry Cohen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The diet survey, part of a huge federal health survey of every state, is based on responses from 305,000 adults in 2005. It indicates the country is only about halfway toward meeting its healthy eating goal three years from now.
"We're really concerned with the lack of success in meeting these national goals," said Cohen, who works in CDC's nutrition and physical activity division.
Although the rate of fruit and vegetable consumption has remained unchanged since 1994, health officials said the goal is still within reach.
"We have more work to do over the next few years," said spokeswoman Rachel Ciccarone.
Specifically the survey showed that 27 percent of adults ate vegetables three times a day, and about 33 percent ate fruit twice a day. A serving size is a half-cup for most fruits and vegetables, one cup for leafy greens.
Senior citizens were more likely than others to follow Mom's advice to eat more veggies, with slightly more than a third of that group eating three or more servings each day. Younger adults, age 18 to 24, ate the fewest vegetables. Nearly four-fifths of that age category scraped the veggies to the side of their plates — if they had vegetables on the plate at all.
Likewise, seniors also ate the most fruit, with nearly 46 percent eating two or more servings of fruit daily. People age 35 to 44 ate fruit the least, with fewer than 28 percent eating the recommended amount of fruit each day.
The federal agency said it doesn't know why people aren't eating more veggies or fruits. Cohen said future surveys will ask people what other foods they are eating.
Susan Krause, a clinical dietitian at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, said people are eating more refined sugars or choosing protein instead of fruits and vegetables.
"There's so much information out there and people get very confused. When they're looking at protein, they feel that's the solution when they're not looking at long-term health benefits," she said. "There's so many fabricated foods now and people are looking at convenience."
Not only are fruits and vegetables lower-calorie, they also have minerals and fiber that help guard against chronic diseases and cancer, the CDC says.
The survey relied on people to report what they were eating. Telephone questioners asked how often they consumed fruit juice, fruit and vegetables. Although Hispanics ate the most fruits (37 percent) compared with blacks and whites, they ate the fewest vegetables, (about 20 percent). Whites, in contrast, ate the fewest fruits (31 percent) but the most veggies (28 percent).
Cohen said the CDC has been working on family and community programs to get more people to eat their veggies. The agency is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get more fresh produce into schools.
Krause said health officials should offer people simple options for getting fruits and vegetables in their diets, such as easy recipes in cooking classes and fruit smoothies or shakes in schools.
"If that's a way of getting it in, at least it's in the right direction," she said. "Certainly (whole) fruit is a better choice, but that could be the next alternative."
Comment: The countries that consume the largest amount of fruits and vegetables, have the lowest cancer rates.
Make sure you get 10 servings of fruits and vegies every day...
High Insulin & Glucose Levels - The Cause of Many Diseases...
High levels of insulin and glucose, the result of eating a high refined carbohydrate diet, can result in heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and cancer. Insulin is produced by the body in response to rising levels of glucose in the blood after a carbohydrate rich meal. The insulin takes the glucose out of the blood and deposits it into glycogen or adipose tissue - usually the latter.Sounds harmless, right? Wrong. The problem is that there are no concentrated sources of glucose in nature. Fruits and vegetables, especially wild ones tend to be low in carbohydrates. All of the concentrated sources of glucose, the so called "complex carbohydrates," are found in foods that have to be cooked and/or processed to become edible. Thus, they are not really natural foods, and our bodies weren't designed to cope with large amounts of glucose contained in them. We only have one hormone, insulin, to lower blood sugar levels but four different hormones that raise it.Hence, today we are paying with the above mentioned diseases. How? Well, since insulin is an anabolic hormone, in large amounts it may encourage tumor cell growth. High levels of insulin directly result in increased blood pressure through various mechanisms such as proliferation of arterial smooth muscle cells, which makes the arteries more rigid. It also activates cholesterol synthesis through its stimulating effect on HMG-CoA reductase, the key enzyme in the cholesterol synthesis pathway. The body produces about 5 times or so more cholesterol than ingested by diet. Thus, if you want your cholesterol levels lowered, avoiding that egg won’t do anything, instead avoid refined carbohydrates. (It’s interesting to note that the most effective cholesterol medications in use today, the statins, work by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase.) Furthermore, insulin directly shuts off the fat burning pathways in the body, and turns on those pathways responsible for the production of fat and triglycerides. High levels of insulin and glucose also damage arteries, which can initiate plaque formation, and glucose directly binds to LDL molecules, rendering them unrecognizable to the liver and causing them to be attacked by macrophage cells of the immune system, which also initiates a process leading to plaque formation. Finally, chronic high levels of insulin can lead to the desensitization of the insulin receptor - leading to type II diabetes. (As an aside, the reason that diabetics have such a high incidence of secondary coronary and vascular disease is because of the chronic high levels of glucose in their blood and the relatively high levels of insulin some of them receive through injections to control their blood sugar level.)
Christopher Wiechert, C.N.C.
Christopher Wiechert's Healthblogger is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. If you decide to use this information on your own, it's your constitutional right, but I assume no responsibility.
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