From Yahoo! News/Johns Hopkins: You already know to eat at least five servings each of fruits and vegetables. But does it matter how these goodies make it to your plate?

Fresh fruits and vegetables straight from the produce aisle are usually best, as long as you're eating them soon after picking. Sometimes though, it's not always possible to purchase produce when it's fresh off the farm.

Seasonal changes will also affect which type of produce we purchase, since fresh fruits and vegetables often are quite expensive. If you can't afford to purchase all your fruits and vegetables fresh, try canned and frozen.

Frozen produce is nutritionally comparable to fresh but canned produce does lose some vitamins and minerals during the heating process. However, the canned versions of at least three vegetables are actually higher in healthful phytochemicals than their fresh versions: Corn, carrots, and tomatoes all benefit from the canning process.

Another benefit of frozen and canned produce: They have a longer shelf life, so you can keep them on hand for quick additions to meals.

If you do purchase more canned or frozen produce, make sure the label says they contain no added salt and sugars. (Remember "heavy syrup"?)

Bottom line: It's more important to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables each day than it is to worry about how they made it to your plate.

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Commentary: well said! Despite what Dr. Atkins said, I don't believe it is possible to eat "too many" when it comes to fruits and vegetables--however, apple pie doesn't count as an apple, zucchini bread is no longer like 'eating zuccini'. With those guidelines in mind, bring on the fruit and veggies! There is so much research showing how the nutritients found in them help improve many markers of health. I sincerely believe that Juice Plus+ taken on a daily basis is a smart investment in your health. visit http://www.jpsupplement.com/ to read some of the research and learn what it can do for you.

Note: If you are interested in a meal plan to assist with your weight loss and health, Medifast provides a diet that makes it easy to plan the foods and meals you will eat. Click here - Medifast - to try the Medifast diet meal plan to help you get started losing weight. Medifast is physician-developed.

A drug that could have negative (side) effects? This doesn't seem possible. I'm willing to bet that if 98% of the prescription medications on the market today were taken OFF the market, health problems would go down and less people would die than normally expected. Now it comes as some sort of surprise that a diet drug could be dangerous for children and their brain development. Unless it's life threatening, or a quality of life is severely compromised, and no natural methods of intervention can or does help, then drug intervention should be considered (bacteria infections would be a perfect example; so would diabetes Type I; or anesthesia for surgery). But a drug to help combat obesity is practically a license to (pardun the pun) have the cake and eat (the whole thing) too! Obesity is "treated" with lifestyle changes, because that's what good health is all about. Here's more about the dangers of anti-obesity drugs --

(Foodconsumer.org) -- Anti-obesity drugs that work by blocking brain molecules similar to those in marijuana should not be used in children, a new animal study reported in the May 8 issue of Neuron suggests.

Scientists from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory found drugs of this sort could block cannabinoid receptors and also suppress the adaptive rewiring of the brain necessary for neural development in children.

Rimonabant (trade name Acomplia) developed by Sanofi-Aventis and awaiting approval for use in the United States is one such drug that works by blocking brain receptors that bind to marijuana and other cannabinoids. read on....

Bottom line: a healthy diet and regular exercise will be the best "treatment" and prevention for obesity, along with a large percentage of health problems.

HWI

Note: If you are interested in a meal plan to assist with your weight loss and health, Medifast provides a diet that makes it easy to plan the foods and meals you will eat. Click here - Medifast - to try the Medifast diet meal plan to help you get started losing weight. Medifast is physician-developed.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

What is the #1 cause of death? Death.  Yes, death is the #1 cause. Everyone will die, unless we figure out how to play with genetics, aging, the mind, and things beyond the physical world for sure. So let's ask a better question. What's the #1 cause of life?  Is it diet, exercise, a positive mental attitude, peace, meditation, money (doubt it), love?

We as a society, and more from doctors, researchers, and drug companies' perspectives and approaches, are so focused on the top causes of death, that we forget to inform, educate and promote the top causes of a healthy life!  What great information and conditioning of beliefs that could be instilled into the public is the focus was not and is not on the negative. We're alive! What can we do to make it better!?

We're so busy avoiding the inevitable instead of making the quality and joy of living much more fulfilling that we've forgotten about the opportunities that exist to pursue of life of health, happiness and prosperity.  We need to be so busy ignoring the obvious - those things that are obviously compromising our health - and start relying on healthy choices to provide and support most everything we need to be healthy (save those few instances when antibiotics are needed).

Diet can mean everything when it comes to matters of the mind or body. Eat how you want to feel. That is, if you want to feel sluggish, tired, run-down, lackadaisical, 'foggy', unsure, unclear, uncertain, and/or unhealthy, then you want to eat plenty of fast food, french fries, milk shakes, candy bars, pizza, burritos, soft drinks, potato chips, and oh yeah hot dogs. But if you want to feel energized, clear-headed, productive, creative, and start to discover your full potential, then your diet will consist of lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of nutrient-dense foods (fruits and vegetables again), water-rich foods (fruits and vegetables), and plenty of lean protein sources (fish, beans), and of course water as your #1 beverage. Even supplementing your diet with whole food based nutrients to be sure you're getting enough antioxidant support is good.

Overall, focusing on the quality of life is more important, and a positive approach to health, than trying to avoid, fix, heal, or cure what ails you after the fact. And leaving your cure in the hands of doctors or drugs is just as much a negative approach than trying to correct your diet and lifestyle. So start making healthy choices and living your life to its fullest!

The Health & Wellness Institute, DC PC

If you are interested in a meal plan to assist with your weight loss and health, Medifast provides a diet that makes it easy to plan the foods and meals you will eat. Click here - Medifast - to try the Medifast diet meal plan to help you get started losing weight. Medifast is physician-developed.

It's one of those familiar sayings - you think you can't afford to eat 'well', but really you can't afford NOT to!  It turns out that low income families have poor dietary habits, eating more processed foods and less fruits and vegetables (although it is a studied fact that the majority - like 95% - of Americans don't get the minimum recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables, so this may be a mute point!).  But the reality is that if you want to get out of poverty, you've got to strive for better. For starters, that means better health. A healthy diet doesn't have to be expensive. Exercise doesn't have to be expensive (last time we checked, a 20 minute walk didn't cost anything). These two variables are the start of building a foundation of a healthy life. A better diet means the brain functions better. Just the discipline of striving for good health will create a ripple effect into other areas of life - doing a better job at work, setting goals to 'move up' and get promoted, more creative thought, improved relationships, and so on. Here's more on the subject of low income families and their poor diet --

Three studies published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association have found that people with lower income do not consume enough fruits and vegetables, largely due to cost factors.

"Cost is one of the factors often cited as contributing to less fruit and vegetable consumption among low-income populations," wrote Alanna Moshfegh in an introductory article. "Cost, as well as convenience, has been shown to be a leading influence on food choice for low-income individuals."

The three articles appear in the November issue of the journal, which is devoted to issues of poverty and nutrition as part of the Council of Science Editors' Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development. More than 230 scientific journals have participated on the council. Read more...

Bottom line: a healthy diet is the beginning of a healthy and balanced lifestyle that can lead to increased productivity and a healthier way of life (you know, the American Dream!)

Note: If you are interested in a meal plan to assist with your weight loss and health, Medifast provides a diet that makes it easy to plan the foods and meals you will eat. Click here - Medifast - to try the Medifast diet meal plan to help you get started losing weight. Medifast is physician-developed. See if Medifast is an affordable diet for you!... and get a personal diet consultant when you order!

What you eat can determine the health of future generations. Or can it?  If the food that you eat and the liquids that you consume can influence the health of your DNA, does it stand to reason that your offspring's health could be influenced by the meals you are eating today?  Possibly, and logic would say sure, why not? On a broader level, diet and the influence on the cell and DNA is apparently an important and significant enough subject to require a conference with some very bright minds sharing their research and thoughts on the subject. Here's more --

The question of how the food we eat influences the behaviour of our cells – including our genes – is the focus of a major international conference that starts today in Melbourne.

The three-day ‘3rd Asia Pacific Nutrigenomics Conference 2008: Diet-Gene Interaction in Human Health and Disease’, has attracted food scientists, nutritionists, dieticians, doctors, nurses, food industry representatives and food regulators from around Australia and the world.

Conference Chair, the Director of the CSIRO Preventative Health National Research Flagship Dr Richard Head, says that better understanding human genes and cellular function will provide us with better ways of understanding chronic diseases and retarding or contributing to their prevention. This is of interest to the broader biomedical community including those involved in nutrition and food sciences.

The conference will feature a thorough review of current science in the area, presented by leading international experts in the field, as well as exploring industry perspectives and regulatory issues. The areas covered in the Conference include the interaction of diet and genes in obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and inflammation. In addition, there will be discussions on the most recent technologies available for understanding these interactions. More on this here....

Bottom line: Diet must be one of the most important influential factors on the future health of mankind. And certainly the quality of the foods we do have and the ground on which it is grown, needs to be taken care of in the utmost degree.  Where will we be without nutrient-rich soil and plenty of fruits and vegetables from which to choose? We don't want to find out.

HWI

If you are interested in a meal plan to assist with your weight loss and health, Medifast provides a diet that makes it easy to plan the foods and meals you will eat. Click here - Medifast - to try the Medifast diet meal plan to help you get started losing weight. Medifast is physician-developed.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Every year in every country, state, province, and city, there are more laws written and proposed - some passed, some not - for the sake of providing a better and more controlled and stable place to live. The real reason that more laws are proposed is to give some politicians importance and purpose when most of the time they just aren't necessary. The 63,000 plus pages of tax code should be indication of this fact. When government starts to intervene with the companies that make natural supplements and dietary products to help support a natural way of health and healing, then the only ones who win are companies that have a vested interest in seeing the products 'regulated' - i.e. pharmaceutical companies.

In Canada, for instance, a new law has been introduced that may outlaw about 60% of natural health products and even make it a crime for parents to give their children supplements. For those of us who seek to support our diet and our health through supplementation, this could be the start of a major negative effect on the health of a nation. While not all supplements or supplement companies are on the "up and up", the ones that do provide a valuable resource for nutritional support, for example, may be compromised in their ability to provide their useful and beneficial products. This would translate into a further decline in the health of that country's citizens, and further perpetuate the use of doctors and medications. Here's more on what's going on in Canada --

Among the changes proposed by the bill are radical alterations to key terminology, including replacing the word "drug" with "therapeutic product" throughout the Act, thereby giving the Canadian government broad-reaching powers to regulate the sale of all herbs, vitamins, supplements and other items. With this single language change, anything that is "therapeutic" automatically falls under the Food and Drug Act. This would include bottled water, blueberries, dandelion greens and essentially all plant-derived substances.

The Act also changes the definition of the word "sell" to include anyone who gives such therapeutic products to someone else. So a mother giving an herb to her child, under the proposed new language, could be arrested for engaging in the sale of unregulated, unapproved "therapeutic substances." Learn about more of these freedom-squashing changes to the law at the Stop51.com website: http://www.stopc51.com/ .  Read more from Natural News.com ....

Bottom line: Protect your right to access nutritional supplements or the health of a nation may spiral further out of control.

If you are interested in a meal plan to assist with your weight loss and health, Medifast provides a diet that makes it easy to plan the foods and meals you will eat. Click here - Medifast - to try the Medifast diet meal plan to help you get started losing weight. Medifast is physician-developed.

The Health & Wellness Institute, DC PC

The fat acceptance gals are NOT going to like this but from the desk of Health & Wellness, out of CHICAGO - New research challenges the notion that you can be fat and fit, finding that being active can lower but not eliminate heart risks faced by heavy women.

“It doesn’t take away the risk entirely. Weight still matters,” said Dr. Martha Gulati, a heart specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Previous research has gone back and forth on whether exercise or weight has a greater influence on heart disease risks.

About two in five U.S. women at age 50 will eventually develop heart attacks or other cardiovascular problems. Excess weight can raise those odds in many ways, including by increasing blood pressure and risks for diabetes, and by worsening cholesterol. Exercise counteracts all three.

“It is reassuring to see that physical activity really does make an impact,” said lead author Dr. Amy Weinstein of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. However, she added, “If you’re overweight or obese, you can’t really get back to that lower risk entirely with just physical activity alone.” read teh entire article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24356209/

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Commentary

I was recently the KeyNote speaker at a large American Heart Association "Go Red" luncheon. 300 women attended the event to learn about heart health and how to improve theirs. I spoke for about 45 minutes about the importance of exercise, water, healthy diet, fruits and vegetables and empowerment. I then asked "who here will commit to eating 2 more raw fresh fruits or vegetables, just 2 additional servings than you already do and I swear to you, only 7 hand raised! 7 out of 300 women there to learn about getting healthier felt they could commit to eating 2 servings more a day.

How sad. How easy to see why the studies say what they do. We have reached a day where people say they want to be healthier but they really don't want to put forth the effort it would take to actually get themselves healthier--they want a pill, powder or potion to do it for them.

Fortunately, there are some that exist! 

Compared with normal-weight active women, the risk for developing heart disease was 54 percent higher in overweight active women and 87 percent higher in obese active women. By contrast, it was 88 percent higher in overweight inactive women; and 2½ times greater in obese inactive women.

Note: If you are interested in a meal plan to assist with your weight loss and health, Medifast provides a diet that makes it easy to plan the foods and meals you will eat. Click here - Medifast - to try the Medifast diet meal plan to help you get started losing weight. Medifast is physician-developed.