Welcome to MAKNA {A Meaning to Life}

Fruits and Vegetables

Background

Eating at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day is an important part to improve your diet and start a healthier lifestyle. Research indicates that the increase of fruit and vegetable intake can decrease your cancer risk by 20 %. This can be due to the wide range of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals and fiber fruits and vegetables contain. These substances are important to strengthen our immune system, so that we stay healthy! Besides this, fruits and veggies have another important advantage: they are naturally low in fat and calories except avocados, olives and coconut.

Choose a Wide Variety

Try to eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables to make sure that you get all your needed vitamins and minerals. A nice guideline you can follow is the one of here is a rainbow on my plate " Start the day yellow with a glass of orange juice, have a white banana during the morning, eat some green spinach for lunch, enjoy a red apple in the afternoon and have some purple eggplant for dinner. You will see it is a joy to discover the whole range of fruits and vegetables available in Malaysia!

What is one Serving?

One often mentioned argument is, that if you are a working person, you have too little time to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Many people have the opinion, that it is not possible to eat a least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. But that is not true even while working and be busy you are able to integrate fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet. So first of all what is one serving? Serving sizes are quite small, smaller than you might think:


1/2 cup chopped, cooked or canned fruit		A medium piece of fruit


1/4 cup of dried fruit		6 oz of 100% fruit or vegetable juice


1 cup raw leafy vegetables		1/2 cup cooked or raw vegetables

So after showing you how small a serving is, it is quite easy to imagine how you can integrate 5 servings of fruits and vegetables in your daily diet, isn't it?

Try to drink a fresh juice in the morning of for lunch. Add some slices of papaya to your oatmeal or cereals or take more cucumber to your nasi lemak. Choose some vegetables for lunch and have a banana as desert. You love to have cookies for your tea or coffee in the afternoon? That's ok, but try to replace them every second day by a handful of dried fruits such as prunes, dates or apricots.

An important point you should ever have in mind: Enjoy eating fruits and vegetables! There are thousands of delicious recipes with fruits and vegetables so say good-by to the picture of eating lots of fruits and vegetables means eating boring green leaves that taste like nothing! Be creative, enjoy your meals and feel better!

It is no miracle to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day!