nutrients, minerals and vitamins from fruits......

hi everyone,

I'm trying to get my diet in order (it's pretty good i just wanna take it that next step), and I was wondering with fruits and vegies what you think are essential fruit and vege (I know it's good to have a variety but ones you think are most important to have in a diet) and does it really make a nutritional difference if the fruit or vegetable is under-ripe, over-ripe or ripe?

I doubt any fruit in any reasonable ripeness could hurt you

but i hear blueberries are the densest in antioxidants

I would say to try and eat more vegetables than fruit, mainly because of the higher glycemic loads usually involved with fruit. Also, the riper the fruit, the greater the sugar content. This is a pain, because fruit is much easier to prepare/eat on the run. Of the fruit you do eat, berries are a great choice. Frozen berries are always good to have in the freezer.

You kind of answered your own question in that you should eat as many varieties as you can. Get a good balance of (dark) green, red, yellow and orange ...the more vivid the better. There's not really any way around that one.

- - - - - err, the rest is a bit of a ramble, sorry - - - - -

The best advice I would give you is to remember it's your health, and you will suffer the consequences of poor food choices in the future - so don't take any one person's word for it unquestioningly. Even experts like Robb and Ido (hope that came across right, guys).

For what it's worth I would take the advice they give as an excellent starting point. There are many ideas floating around at the moment based around Paleo-style nutrition, with slight differences while more evidence comes in. For example, most agree that fat is good, but some say saturated fat is beneficial, some say detrimental. This is what I mean about making your own mind up by reading around.

When people are advising you to do some seemingly radical things like: stop eating grains, eat less fruit, eat more fat, vegetables, cholesterol, protein, etc ...you need to be sure it's based on good, hard, and most of all recent evidence.

For my personal experience, following this kind of advice has lowered my bodyfat, lowered my markers for cardiovascular disease, and enabled me to improve performance. I also have more energy, sleep better and have more stable moods. My wife and kids approve!

Cheers,

George

P.s. Avocado is technically a fruit, but you should eat plenty of those!!

I think for fruits you can't go wrong with berries, especially blueberries, strawberries, and cranberries. Grapes are supposed to be very good too, at least that's what I'm told. Pineapples are good for joint health and taste amazing. Kiwi's are.... green, and have a lot of vitamin C. I'm not sure how promanently fruits fit in to a paleolithic diet; I'm pretty sure I eat too much of them to qualify, but I know that they certainly arent bad for you so long as they aren't furry and melting. As for vegetables, I believe it's more or less agreed apon that you can't go wrong with leafy greens such as lettuce and spinach, and other greens like brocolli and green beans are nice too.

A nice way to work this is try to eat locally and in season. For the folks who do not live in temperate locals, just run with "in season" which is whatever is on sale at the market. Variety will take care of the big picture.