Fruits and vegetables are very interesting for modifying a diet that is too unsuitable for our way of life. Progressive substitution is more interesting in any case than diets based on deprivation. Along with many health benefits, fruits and vegetables replace other richer foods, alter their absorption, reduce hunger and help fight weight gain more pleasantly than restrictive diets.
Half of the French and Europeans would like to lose weight … Without achieving it despite dozens of theories, mainly based on dietary restrictions, such as Weight Watchers or the Atkins diet, or even deprivation. However, these theories do not take into account the determinism of the human body. This is what explains this “yo-yo” effect with, in the end, not only a regain of the lost weight, but often a weight gain.
Against this deadly restrictive strategy, you have to rethink your diet and gradually incorporate fruits and vegetables. Whether they are fresh, frozen or canned, all the studies show that their benefit goes far beyond just weight loss.
A body “trained” by evolution to store energy
Mankind has spent almost all of its evolution solving two problems: how to find food to eat, and especially how to respond to the inevitable periods of food shortages, that is to say, how to store?
The body has therefore been designed trained to withstand starvation since the dawn of time. He therefore stores very efficiently, but hates destocking. He does this very sparingly. For the survival of the species, it had to be easier to gain weight than to lose weight.
Storing the sugar which represents energy in the form of fat is therefore a fundamental act for the survival of the species, it is a real evolutionary determinism which is placed under the responsibility of a very particular cell: “the adipocyte “.
The adipocyte is an energy storage cell
Over the course of human evolution, physiology has responded to the obligation to store energy through a microscopic unit of storage: the fat cell, or “adipocyte”.
This cell which makes up fat, and which has long been considered a “good fat cell” without interest, is much more sophisticated than it appears. Discovering how it works has made it possible to understand the mechanism of excess weight gain, and to observe that fat is not stored only to disrupt our silhouette on the beaches, but to store energy which is essential for the body.
Most of the energy comes from sugar, the “essence” of our muscles. Without sugar, man would be immobile! Everyone has also seen, in the event of a pump stroke, the almost miraculous effect of a lump of sugar … But it stores very poorly and in very small quantities: after a few minutes of effort, there are more available. The hunter of prehistoric times could therefore have found himself helpless when the hunt for his game lasted for hours. But, fortunately, or unfortunately, the body knows how to store sugar in the form of … fat!
An unsuitability for the modernity of the last 50 years
Our Cro-Magnon ancestor learned to store the energy he needed very well in fat. But he was not obese or overweight for two reasons: he ate less than us (or more irregularly) and at home, the energy expenditure was very important: endless hours of hunting or harvesting in the wild.
But, since the last war, lifestyles have changed dramatically in the rich and industrialized countries: food is abundant, it is increasingly rich in energy. Above all, between individual and collective transport and all the aids at his disposal (washing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc.), modern man hardly spends any more energy.
On the other hand, he still has the same fat cell, as efficient as at the age of the Cro-Magnon man: it has not had time to evolve in barely 70 years.
Change your diet
Preventing weight gain through diet often begins with slogans. For fruits and vegetables, we first had, a few years ago: “10 fresh fruits and vegetables … per day”! Today, more reasonably, we are back to “5”.
Their interest has long been suspected. We can even find the explanation in the cave man, when he was a hunter and gatherer. At that time, the body had to be content with sweet wild berries and meat. A food synergy was therefore established between these 2 sources of food, animal and plant. Meats are high in cholesterol that is potentially toxic to our arteries. The body has therefore done everything to eliminate them, through food, thanks to the fibers provided by fruits and vegetables.
In any order, we must therefore try to add fruits or vegetables to our food ration. The total is therefore not insurmountable: orange juice and apple in the morning, grated carrots and mash at noon, vegetable soup in the evening, and voila.
Expanded benefits for fruits and vegetables
The primary benefits of fruits and vegetables are for the prevention of certain cancers. The diversity of components contained in fruits and vegetables plays a significant role in slowing down the disease process.
We do not know exactly how to explain this beneficial effect. It is the diversity of all these products that make it an explosive cocktail against cancer. The proof ? When we tried to put together all the supposedly effective components in a single pill, it didn’t work!
Our hearts are not immune to the benefits of fruits and vegetables either. The apple moderately lowers cholesterol. Bananas, thanks to the potassium it contains, have a favorable effect in cases of high blood pressure.
More extraordinary, according to an American study: the daily consumption of all these different fruits and vegetables each day would lower the risk of attack of paralysis (stroke) by 30%. Add to that the prevention of diabetes and obesity …
Potato: vegetable or starch?
The potato is firmly established in our diet, but is it a vegetable or a starch (like pasta or rice)?
Both classifications are possible, according to dieticians. Moreover, popular common sense had understood this: where do you store potatoes in the kitchen? Certainly not with other starchy foods, pasta or rice, but with carrots, turnips or onions, which are indeed vegetables. Potatoes can therefore be included, but in reasonable quantities, in our daily ration of vegetables.
In this regard, it is always said that fruits and vegetables are the unloved of our children. However, it is in childhood, where eating habits are taken, that we must be vigilant. Maybe our little ones don’t like vegetables very much because they aren’t really on their parents’ plates.
This is confirmed by a survey which shows that 60% of us consume too little fruit and vegetables.
Importance of fibers
Fibers are substances, little or not digested, contained in large quantities in plants, and which are found in our stool.
The particular advantage of fibers lies, among other things, in the fact that they require an effort to chew: chewing and not gulping down is one of the first recommendations of all nutritionists to all those who want to lower their weight. Chewing more increases the production of saliva and gastric juices, which promotes the impression of a full stomach, and therefore fullness. It is an appetite suppressant!
Fiber isn’t the only benefit of fruits and vegetables. Our history books have told us all that cabbage and lemon once saved sailors from scurvy. Research has highlighted, especially over the past forty years, many other benefits that strongly advocate for significant changes in our diet.
Interest of fibers for digestion
A last argument which should really make you want to cross the door of the greengrocer store: take the case of the first complaint of the French to their doctor: transit disorders, scientific name of our meeting, theoretically daily, with the toilets. We are, it seems, a people of chronically constipated!
If the battle of digestion, which begins in the mouth and stomach, really occurs in the small intestine, it is in the large intestine that the process of stool formation and evacuation takes place. For this to work perfectly, you need … fibers! And where are the fibers found? Mostly in fruits and vegetables.
So, now to respond positively to the agonizing question: “How are you?” “(The origin of which is the question that was asked to the king every morning to know the state of his stool), it is necessary to consume five fruits or vegetables per day, that is to say 400 grams of products. In addition, with pleasure, because it is good.
A final benefit of fibers, their role as a natural brush in our large intestine. It is because they consume the majority of fibers, which cannot be assimilated, that Africans have on average stools that exceed 400 grams every day … and that there is, in these countries, virtually no bowel cancer.
So fruits and vegetables must be found regularly on the plate. Raw, cooked, fresh, frozen or canned, it doesn’t matter! But in any case, not in juice, because they will have lost all their magic fibers.
All you have to do is juggle the upcoming menus so that this consumption becomes a pleasure rather than a constraint. It may not be that simple all year round, but it is definitely worth the effort.
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