NEWS RELEASE

December 1, 2001

Knight Ridder/Tribune

Your Mother Was Right: It’s Time to Eat Your Fruits and Vegetables

Miami – To improve nutrition – a key element in immediate and future health – focus first on attitude, then on food, dietitians suggest.

Think lifestyle, not diet. Think moderation, no abstinence. Think enjoyment, not deprivation.

“We want to get people into something they can do for the rest of their life,” said family physician Dr. Penny Tenzer, who discusses nutrition with her patients. “Food is not a bad thing.”

Nutrition and exercise must go hand in hand – because how many calories you burn affects how much energy in the form of calories you need to consume.

“In the short term, nutrition gives you the feeling of well-being, the stamina to enjoy your life,” said Sheah Rarback, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and a nutritionist at the University of Miami School of Medicine. “In the long term, good nutrition lowers your risk for chronic diseases,” including cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis.

Registered dietitians like Rarback and Ronnie Korschun, who has had a private practice in the Miami area for 26 years, extol the virtues of a balanced diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and high-fiber foods.

“Fruits and vegetables are loaded with phytochemicals that we know do fabulous things in the body,” Korschun said. “So if it’s a vegetable or a fruit, it contains nutrients that are worth ingesting.”

Pigment-producing phytochemicals like lycopene in tomatoes and watermelon, beta-carotene in carrots and mangoes, and lutein in green beans and honeydew melon, are being shown to fight cancer, heart disease and health problems associated with obesity.

The National Cancer Institute’s “5 A Day” Program, which urges people to eat five fruits and vegetables each day, now also recommends “sampling the spectrum.” That is, eating fruits and veggies that are bright orange, deep red, dark green, blue, purple and yellow.

Only 10 percent of Americans are following the “5 A Day” recommendation, Rarback said.

Animal proteins, fats and sweets have their place, but Americans (more than half of whom are overweight) hardly need to worry about getting enough of them, Rarback said.

“Low protein isn’t an issue for most people,” Rarback said. Federal dietary guidelines call for .8 grams of protein per kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of body weight. A person weighing 135 pounds, for example, should eat about 50 grams (or 200 calories) of protein a day.

Forget the high-protein fad diets and the promises that mixing certain foods will burn fat, Korschun said. “Carbohydrates are essential to life,” Korschun said. “Protein in excess turns to fat.”

The nutritional bottom line: You lose weight when you burn up more calories than you consume. You gain weight when you eat more calories than you burn. The best way to lose weight, nutritionist say, is to exercise more and/or eat less of the same healthy foods you plan to eat for good.

It doesn’t take a huge commitment to improve nutrition. “People think it’s all or nothing and it’s not,” Rarback. “A better diet begins with one small change. If you start adding healthy foods, your fat intake will naturally drop.”

Chew on these simple tidbits to improve nutrition:

Eat breakfast. It jump-starts metabolism and gives you energy. Go for a high-fiber cereal or oatmeal.
Give in to a craving, but be honest. Feeling deprived doesn’t improve nutrition, Tenzer said. “Whatever you have a taste for, you really ought to have it,” Tenzer said, “and know you can’t have something else.”
Don’t forget to snack. Try baby carrots, fruits, light popcorn, gazpacho.
Eat a piece of fresh fruit every day. “It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but you don’t know how many people aren’t doing that,” Rarback said.
Move, move, move. “Nutrition is about feeling better and we just need to get up and move more. Take the stairs. Take a walk,” Rarback said.
Portion control. “We have been trained not from the food pyramid but restaurant portions, which can equal four servings,” Rarback said.
Add fiber. Switch to a whole-grain bread, a higher fiber cereal, add wheat germ to a dish.
Eat as a family. “We’re not just a fast-food nation, we’re a fast-eating nation,” Rarback said. “Get back to enjoying flavors and the social aspect of eating. We’ve sort of lost that.”