Sunday, March 20, 2011

Fruits and Vegetables

I keep learning that I have been misled in life, nutritionally speaking.  Are fruits and vegetables the wonder foods they are made out to be?  I do eat veggies, especially leafy and green vegetables, and occasionally I eat raspberries.  But three recent studies have opened my eyes to the so-called benefits of a diet high in fruits and vegetables.

One study concluded that a diet high in fruits, vegetables and grains (and low in fat) did not significantly reduce the risks of coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease in post menopausal women over the eight years of the study.

Another study concluded that a low fat, high fiber diet with a lot of fruits and vegetables had no significant effects staving off a second bout of breast cancer in women who already beaten breast cancer once.  This was a 7.3 year long study.

A third study failed to find any beneficial effects of a low fat, high fiber, high fruits and vegetables diet on recurrence of bowel cancer in victims who had already suffered from this cancer, even after eight years.

So, where are the studies that show beneficial effects of a low fat, high fiber, high fruit and vegetable diet?  I haven't yet found any.  That doesn't mean they don't exist, but it is quite easy to find studies that show no beneficial effects and I have not had such an easy time locating the studies with empirical results demonstrating the benefits of a diet high in fruits and vegetables (and low in fat).

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