Fruits, Veggies, and Disease Prevention
- MedSpeak
- Aug 12
- 3 min read
From when we are young, we are constantly told “eat your fruits and veggies.” Yes, fruits and vegetables are healthy, but how do they stop disease? It’s true they are highly effective in lowering the risks of many chronic diseases such as cancer as well as several cardiac diseases. But let’s dive deeper: how do fruits and vegetables actually help us live longer and healthier?
What’s in the food?
According to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, or CDC, fruits and vegetables provide essential vitamins and minerals that are critical to our health. The vitamins and nutrients help our bodies stay healthy and prevent chronic diseases from developing or progressing. That’s the basic gist of it.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, have deduced that eating fruits and vegetables regularly can prevent three common diseases: hypertension, stroke, and coronary heart disease. In addition, cancer risk may be inversely correlated with fruit and vegetable consumption.
Certain nutrients are essential to different parts of the body. Nutrients aren’t created equal; the body is complex and requires many of them to thrive. For example, calcium reinforces your bones, while too much cholesterol in food can lead to clogged arteries, which increases the risk of certain heart conditions as the heart has to work harder to pump blood throughout the body.
Unfortunately, health is not as cut-and-dry as we would like it to be. Conventional unhealthy foods sometimes don’t have an effect on our whole body; more commonly, they’re bad enough for one body system or organ that health professionals will categorize them as “unhealthy.” For example, is a burger really unhealthy? Critical fiber can be in the bread, and there are vegetables between the patties. So is it healthy? No, the beef patty under the vegetables has saturated fats that can clog your arteries.
Fruits and vegetables each provide certain benefits that are incredibly useful for certain parts of the body. They are not just healthy for every part of the body; for example, oranges are rich in antioxidants which help out the immune system, but they have little to no effect on the skeletal system because they lack calcium or Vitamin D.
How do they prevent disease?
Specific nutrients have certain benefits, as discussed earlier. Calcium helps build bones, as does Vitamin D. But these benefits prevent disease from happening. For example, osteoporosis occurs when bones get thinner and more brittle. But a steady intake of calcium can prevent this disease from occurring until very old age. Many commonly occurring long term diseases can be prevented by taking the nutrients that counteract the causes of the disease. For cancer, the immune system needs to be strong to more commonly prevent cells with mutations from multiplying and turning into tumors. Eating berries and oranges with antioxidants strengthen the immune system and therefore contribute to cancer prevention.
Conclusion
It is important to follow nutrition advice such as MyPlate to properly consume the correct proportions of nutrients daily. Following nutrient plans can help the entire body stay healthy and also counteract the causes of many preventable, chronic diseases to live a long, healthy life. Humans cannot just eat one fruit or vegetable and expect to stay healthy; since different foods have different benefits, a balanced diet will keep us healthy for longer.
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