According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) it is recommended that each person eat 7-13 servings of fruits and vegetables everyday. You may be thinking to yourself… “Can I do that?” or “Have I EVER done that?” Most importantly to parents, “Can I get my children to do that?” My husband and I thought the same thing until we learned more about health while trying to find a cure for our son’s seizures.
We all want what’s best for our children. All good parents know that the best thing is to set them up for a long healthy life. No one wants their children to worry about heart disease, diabetes, or cancer when they are grown up. How can we do that? Did you know that there is a way to dramatically help prevent these things from happening? It starts with the basics, eating healthy. Imagine a car. If we put syrup in our car instead of the proper fuel, it won’t work. In fact, we will probably wreck the engine completely. Like a car, our bodies are incredibly designed machines. It requires the correct fuel to function properly and efficiently. Makes sense, right? So where can we find the proper fuel for our bodies?
To make this simple we will look at two main types of food, processed food and whole food. Processed food is anything that has been “adjusted” with flavors, preservatives, etc… These foods are usually easy to identify because we all love to eat them. The chips, snack cakes, soda, boxed meals, and sugar packed foods. Yet, some foods that are processed are harder to identify for some people. For example, bleached white bread, tv dinners, and other items that may not appear to be junk food, but are packed full of preservatives and stripped of their nutritional value. To identify these foods all you really need to do is look at the label of ingredients. Anything that looks like a long chemical name or has a long list of ingredients is usually not in a natural form. Whole foods on the other hand are very easy to understand because they typically have a short ingredient list and the ingredients are recognizable. The most basic whole foods are raw ingredients like cherries, apples, oranges, lettuce, celery, farm fresh eggs, organic sourced foods, and usually meat from local farms. Anything else like milk and cheese are borderline foods that have nutritional value, but should be eaten in moderation their high levels of sodium and methods of processing.
The best source of nutrients is found in raw or whole foods, but it can be expensive to buy everything in its most natural form. Another way that I have found that my entire family is able to receive our whole food nutrients is from a whole food supplement Juice Plus+. This is an exciting product because the ingredients are listed on the bottle as fruit or vegetable juice powder and pulp from whole foods including apple, orange, pineapple, cranberry, peach, etc… or carrot, parsley, beet, kale, broccoli, cabbage, etc… These supplements are very affordable and can be purchased from the comfort of your own home. The best part for parents is that when an adult purchases, a child can received the same quality of supplement in a gummie form for free. I recommend this to everyone, it really is a life changing product. For those of you adults like my husband, Juice Plus+ offers the same great tasting gummies for adults.
On a side note, one major nutrient that the average American is deficient in is Omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3 are essential to proper cell function, which affects every part of your body and can increase your body’s ability to absorb nutrition. The best available source that we have found is from fish oil. The fish oil that we use comes in both a liquid and gel cap forms. The liquid is recommended because it has a lemon flavor with absolutely no fish taste or fishy side effects like after taste or burps. The liquid advantage is you only take it once a day. The gel caps use the same high quality liquid, but must be taken twice a day due to the size of the gel caps.
I can’t guarantee good health, although studies have shown people that intake daily recommended doses of fruits and vegetables and stay active have a much lower chance of health problems in their future. That’s what all parents want, isn’t it? The best chance for their children to lead long, healthy lives. You CAN do something about it today. It is NEVER too late to start. In the case of our son, he has been seizure free ever since we added fish oil to his diet and removed gluten. The Juice Plus+ combined with the fish oil are now essentials in our family.
The two websites that we use to purchase our Juice Plus+ and fish oil are www.rcjjuiceplus.com and www.fishoilguru.com. I would love to share more details about healthy living, but that will need to be on a different article. God bless and good health to you and your family.
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