Everybody knows that fruits and vegetables are healthy choices, they're full of fiber and vitamins, and they can ward off illness and disease.
We haven't always listened when we were told to eat more, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take such advice to heart now that we are older.
If we took a closer look, we would see we are actually hurrying through the day up to our elbows in hamburgers and greasy french fries, topped with a chocolate shake for lunch.
It is not very often that we pass up the convenient, sugary treats, which are so easy to pop in our mouths, to take the time to prepare a nutritious snack for ourselves, even if we don't indulge in unhealthy, fatty, fast food lunches every day.
Grapes, cantaloupe or watermelon are good examples.
Fruits are the original fast food.
Give them a quick bath and you can start noshing right away.
Maybe you would prefer some carrots, celery or cauliflower, with a bit of Italian dressing for dipping.
Scientists know that we're not eating what we should.
They know that the turnips and tomatoes are going uneaten, untouched.
So to motivate people to develop healthier eating habits, we're being reminded of the Five-a-Day campaign to help us pay more attention to our diets and challenge us to have five servings of fruits and vegetables daily.
In the beginning, five servings per day appears like a lot.
However, a few easy tips exist that might help you, like eating a piece of fruit in the morning.
Fruit can be a tasty addition to cereal, pancakes and waffles.
Apples or bananas make great portable snacks.
It is very easy to add veggies to your daily diet.
For lunch, try including a salad.
That's an easy way to get in a serving of green stuff.
When dining out, you should order sandwiches with tomatoes, lettuce or sprouts.
If you're baking, you can sneak in vegetables and never even realize it.
If you're making a sauce or a soup, you can load up on vegetables.
Cook up a batch of stew, and lay on the vegetables.
Try putting peanut butter on celery, something which is also a great snack for the kids.
Offer a variety of foods to those picky kids who change their mind every day about what they like to eat.
They are always told to eat their veggies in order to get a sweet treat, but this technique doesn't do anything to make veggies more appealing.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if we tried the opposite approach.
How about some broccoli after that chocolate cake? Fruit and vegetable juices are another delicious and refreshing way to meet your goal of five servings a day.
But, the drawback to juices is that they are not a good source of fiber.
Kids can fill up on juice and then not eat their food.
Juices are also packed full of calories.
There are numerous benefits to your health when you eat the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables.
It's getting harder and harder to pretend you don't know about them.
If you eat more veggies and fruit, you reduce your risk of contracting about fourteen different types of cancer.
You're that much healthier than folks who only get one or two servings a day.
Fruits and vegetables also help in the reduction of risks of adult blindness, strokes, and heart attacks.
Even though we are well aware of these facts, we continue to find reasons why we can't eat our fruits and vegetables.
People love to cry that fruits and veggies are costly.
Some people whine that they're too busy to slice up healthy foods to eat.
Yet, they're not too busy to wait in the drive through line for the heart attack in a bag.
Letting a piece of fruit or a vegetable get too ripe is another way some excuse themselves from eating more produce.