Eating
more vegetables
Nowadays, people pay more attention on their health. As a result, people
talks more about healthy eating than before. There are so many healthy foods
available in the supermarket. However, so many people just pay attention to the
descriptions on the package of the meat. They care about the location where the
meat is produced, and the quality of the meat. They sometimes ignore the
existence of fruits and vegetables, which are also very important to people’s
health.
Fruits and vegetables have so many nutrients that meat could not
provide. People eat meat everyday. By eating meat, people could get the energy
they need, which can make them become stronger. In Chinese people’s minds, meat
is very important to people’s growing. You can always hear Chinese parents ask
their children to eat more meat while they are eating. In their eyes, the more
meat their children eats, the better they grows. Indeed, meat could provide
enough energy to people’s bodies. However, only energy is not enough for the
normal and healthy function of people’ lives. At this time, eating some fruits
and vegetables is very important. In Steffen’s article, “Eat Your Fruit and
Vegetables,” the author wrote, “Fruit and vegetables are rich in many
health-promoting nutrients and food compounds, including antioxidants such as
vitamin C and folate, potassium, phytochemicals, dietary fibre, and plant
proteins that have been inversely related to high blood pressure and stroke.”
From this viewpoint, we know the nutrient of fruit and vegetables. Unlike meat
that mainly provides energy, fruit and vegetables offer their special nutrients
to people’s healthy. Yet, the amount of these nutrients may not as much as
energy’s. But we cannot ignore the importance of these nutrients. Use vitamin C
as an example, in Hirschmann’s article, “Adult Scurvy”, the writer wrote, “Vitamin
C occurs primarily in fruits and vegetables, and scurvy develops from
inadequate consumption of these sources, usually because of ignorance about
proper nutrition, psychiatric disorders, alcoholism, or social isolation.” In
this idea, we know that scurvy is mainly caused by the lack of Vitamin C. Fruit
and vegetables contain large amount of Vitamin C, if people could eat some
fruits, they can better defend themselves from being a scurvy patient. I still
remember the first time when I heard the word “scurvy.” It is a story between
my mom and me. When I was young, I did not like to eat oranges. I felt eating it
bothered a lot. The juice of the orange would spill out, so every time when I finished
eating an orange, I had to have my hands washed. I thought it cost me a lot of
personal time. In order to persuade me to eat some oranges, my mom told me a
story about oranges and scurvy. The story was in the old times, watermen always
infect a strange disease when they were sailing on the sea. The strange disease
was scurvy. After a long period of time, people found that eating oranges could
efficiently help people from infecting scurvy. So every time they sailed on the
sea, they took so many oranges with them. As the development of science, people
found that it was the vitamin C containing in the oranges that helped watermen
to keep healthy in that time. It is a depressive story for me. I firstly know
what are the vitamin c and scurry. After that, I feel like to eat oranges. I
still cannot understand the reason why I like to eat oranges now is the fear of
infecting scurvy or t enjoying the delicious taste of oranges.
However, people do not eat enough fruit
and vegetables, especially for vegetables. If you go to restaurants, you can
see dishes made by meat are more than dishes made by vegetables. People eat too
many meat everyday. To many people, they could live without vegetables, but
they could not live without meat. As the result of eating too many meat, the
number of fat people is larger and larger. New styles of disease cause by
eating too much meat exist quickly in these years. Fatty liver is a disease
that causes by food balance; the number of fatty liver patient grows very
quickly in recent years. In the article “Causes and Metabolic Consequences of
Fatty Liver”, authors wrote, “In human studies, individuals with fatty live
have higher intake of calories as well as saturated fat and cholesterol
compared with healthy controls. They also have lower intake of polyunsaturated
fat, fiber and antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin C and E (99-101)”( Stefan,
Norbert, Konstantinos Kantartzis, and Hans-Ulrich Häring p.943). From this
point, the reason for fatty liver can be regarded as having eat too many meat
and less vegetables and fruit. The growing number of fatty live patient is a
reflection of people’s eating habits. In order to prevent from diseases such as
fatty liver, people begin to recognize the importance of eating vegetables. In
a Chinese family, when their children are about 10 years old. Some parents
began to worry about their children’s weight, and the variety of food. They
even force their children to eat less meat and more vegetables. Sometimes when
I am sitting on a bus, I can hear people talk about their worry about their
children. Then discuss and try to come up with an idea to make their children
eat more vegetables instead of meat. Although people still prefer not to eat too
many vegetables, luckily, people now are eating more fruits. Obviously, fruit
is popular than vegetables. In the article, “Fruit More Popular than Vegetables
and Recognised Better by Children.” Edwards and Hartwell wrote, “Fruit is more
popular than vegetables and recognition of fruit is better, among children aged
eight to 11 years, a study has found.” In my mind, the reason for this result
is the taste of fruit. There are so many fruit all over the world; every fruit
has its own tastes. Children could find the taste they like among so many
fruit. But vegetables are different, they sometimes cooked in the same way, and
there is not big difference between the tastes of different vegetables. Besides
that, there are other reasons for people having eaten more fruit than
vegetables. In the supermarket, you can easily see the advertisement that links
the healthy and fruit together. This efficiently increases people’s interest to
buy some fruit back home. Nowadays, the transportation develops very quickly;
you can buy fruit from all over the world in the supermarket. Some people just
want to try a new variety of fruit, this also cause people to eat so fruit. Fruit
could be considered as snacks for people to drink. Fruit often are put on the
desk in the parlor. When people are watching TV, they sometimes need some
snacks to eat. In this way, people can eat fruit.
In fact, there are so many benefits to eat fruit and vegetables. One
amazing benefits is that eating fruit and vegetables could defend cancer. In
the article “Fruit and Vegetables and Cancer Risk”, Key wrote, “Epidemiological
research on fruit and vegetables and cancer then increased rapidly, and by
1992, a review of 156 studies concluded that ‘ for most cancer sites, persons
with low fruit and vegetable intake experience about twice the risk of cancer
compared to those with a high intake, even after control for potentially
confounding factors’ (Block et al, 1992)”(p.6). In this search, we know that
people eat more fruit and vegetables have a lower risk to get infect cancer
than people who eat less fruit and vegetables. The importance of eating fruit
and vegetables is really far more exceed our imagination. To most people, I am
sure they have never imagined eating fruit and vegetables could make
contribution to preventing cancer. In other words, people’s ignorance of eating
fruit and vegetables increases their possibility to infect cancer.
Having done so much research, I find it is really very important to eat
fruit and vegetables. Through eating them, we can better defend disease such as
scurvy, fatty liver, and cancer. Even though we may not make ourselves that
worse, eating more fruit and vegetables still can keep our food balance, makes
our weight in a normal period and cause us living in a healthy mood.
Once I was eating only meat without any vegetables. Fortunately, I keep
the habit of eating fruits everyday. Maybe this is the reason why I am still
healthy now. But now, I decide to change my eating habits. I will make myself
eat more vegetables everyday. Even though the taste of vegetables is not
attractive, but the benefits of eating vegetables really shock me. I want to
make myself healthy by eating more vegetables. I will still act as usual to eat
some fruit everyday. Besides, I still eat meat in the future, having right
amount of meat everyday could provide me enough energy to face different
challenges. In my mind, control myself to eat suitable amount of meat,
vegetables and fruit is the way to keep healthy.
More and more people begin to focus on healthy eating now. I am not an
expert in this area. But I am still confident enough to give the suggestion, if
you want to keep healthy, remember to eat more vegetables and fruits.
Works
Cited
Steffen, Lyn M. "Eat Your Fruit and
Vegetables." The Lancet 367.9507 (2006): 278-9. Print.
Hirschmann, J. V., and G. J. Raugi.
"Adult Scurvy." Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 41.6
(1999): 895-910. Print.
Stefan, Norbert, Konstantinos Kantartzis,
and Hans-Ulrich Häring. "Causes and Metabolic Consequences of Fatty
Liver." Endocrine reviews 29.7 (2008): 939-60. Print.
J S A Edwards, and H H Hartwell.
"Fruit More Popular than Vegetables and Recognised Better by
Children." Community Practitioner 75.12 (2002): 482. Print.
Key, T. J. "Fruit and Vegetables and
Cancer Risk." British Journal of Cancer 104.1 (2011): 6-11. Print.
