75% of People in the US
are not Eating Their Veggies
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by Amy, September 26, 2010
75% of
People in the US Are Not Eating Their Veggies
Considering
the fact that a bad economy makes many households scale back on the expense of
extra meat on the grocery list, but a staggering 3 of 4 people in the US to not
eat the daily recommended amount of vegetables.
Eating
fruit is also not on top of your typical American’s list of daily food intake.
At least not the recommended amount anyway. It is recommended that you eat 2
fruit servings a day. Well, 2 out of 3 don’t eat the daily recommended amount of
fruit in the US.
This new
information was just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than ever, the recommended fruit and vegetable intake is vital to consider.
We are here to tell you that simply bragging that “Oh, Little Jimmy Isn’t Eating
His Veggies” is no joking matter anymore. In fact, fruits and vegetables have
been shown to build up our immunity to illness, lower your blood pressure and
more. Eating the daily recommended fruit and vegetable intake will also help us
lose weight and decrease the threat for suffering from many leading causes of
death including cancer and heart disease.
When you
consider that the US has a very high rate of obesity, a record high, it should
actually come as no surprise that 3 of 4 don’t eat the daily recommended fruit
and vegetable intake.
To put it
bluntly, I do not know many obese vegans or vegetarians. In fact, most live very
active, healthy, long lives.
The US
government recommends that we eat at least 2 1/2 to 3 cups of vegetables daily
and two cups of fruit each day. In fact, in the last sentence you may have
noticed we used the term “cup” instead of “serving”. That is because finally the
government is finally taking a closer look into how it advertises a serving. The
term “serving” has effectively been replaced by “cup”.
It is
amazing that this newly released information regarding our recommended fruit and
vegetable intake shows such a high rate of failure. That’s because at the same
time, we are noticing a new trend towards leading healthier lifestyles and
general concern for the planet and our precious environment.
This report
does indicate that in 2009, just under 33% of US citizens ate fruit 2 or more
times daily more than 26% of adults ate vegetables 3 or more times daily. Also,
the US population is one way or another eating less fruit than a decade ago. So,
the amount of people in the US sticking to the recommended fruit intake has
lowered from just over 34% in 2000 to about 33% in 2009. If you doo the math,
that’s about a two percentage point decrease that experts say may be small, but
very important to track.
It is hard
for many of us to comprehend that the recommended fruit and vegetable intake is
not met partially due to convenience. Yes, we have noticed that in the last
decade (part of the time frame considered in this report), fruits and veggies
haven’t been as easy to buy as say a hamburger might be, but change is coming.
More and more, fruits and veggies are even carried in better variety in
convenience stores nationwide. Now we just have to make sure it’s affordable
there to get people interested it buying it.
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