which have more minerals and vitamins than juices filled with
lighter-hued veggies like cucumbers and celery.
I’d rather you concoct your own fruity drink. Make a big jug of
ice water and slice some fruit into it. If you want a little more
sweetness, you can also stir in a teaspoon of stevia. Or you can buy
juice from the store and dilute it with equal parts water to cut the
sugar in half while still maintaining the volume. In either case, you’ll
satisfy a sweetness craving without going near the fizzy drink
machine.Fix-It Functions: Piles of evidence point to this basic premise: Eat your fruits
and veggies to build a more resilient body. A recent Chinese and Harvard
University review of sixteen studies involving nearly a million people found that
those with a higher consumption of fruits and vegetables (a modest five servings
a day) had a lower risk of all ‘natural’ causes of death. Researchers pointed to
the vitamins, antioxidants, and other compounds as the likely reason why.
Now, it is worth discussing the two biggest questions I get when it comes to
fruits and vegetables. One, doesn’t fruit contain sugar and isn’t sugar bad? It is
true that fruits contain a simple sugar called fructose. With sugar, however, we’re
most concerned with the kind added to foods, not the sugar that naturally comes
in food like fruits. So dumping sugar in your coffee isn’t great. Same with sugar-
loaded foods like ice cream and fizzy drinks and cookies. But naturally sweet
watermelon? A-OK.
That said, I typically advise people to tilt in favour of fruits with lower natural
sugar content, like berries, and not to eat too many servings of sugary fruits, like
bananas, grapes, and pineapples. It’s advice that falls under the “too much of
anything is bad” rule. But if you’re having three servings a day of any fruit,
that’s just fine, and it’s certainly better than other sweet, processed options. Plus,
the fibre in fruit slows the absorption of sugar, and that’s a good thing, because it
prevents that sudden spill of glucose into your bloodstream.
THE FALLOUT FROM FRUIT?
How do plants protect themselves against possible invaders, like insects