Fruits and vegetables are a critical part of healthy eating, providing vitamins, minerals and a host of other helpful substances like phytochemicals that cannot be found in a vitamin pill. Fruits and vegetables are delicious, and their high water and fiber content provides eating satisfaction without a lot of calories, which makes them a valuable addition to any diet. Control your weight and maintain health and fitness by adding fruits and vegetables to your diet.
The Fruit and Vegetable Lifestyle Diet
Fruits and vegetables can help manage your weight through a healthy lifestyle. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a diet plan based on adding fruits and vegetables to every meal: For breakfast, cut your cereal portion back and fill the bowl with fruit, or scramble up a vegetable-filled omelet. For lunch, substitute lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions for 2 oz. of cheese and 2 oz. of meat in a sandwich or wrap, or add chopped cooked leftover vegetables to a noodle soup broth. For dinner, the CDC diet plan says use your eyes: fruits, vegetables, and whole grains should take up the largest percentage of your dinner plate. If they don't, remove some of the pasta, rice, meat, or cheese and replace it with beans, fruit, or vegetables. Eat one or two 100-calorie snacks through the day, such as a medium apple or banana, or a cup of grapes, carrot sticks, or blueberries.
Cabbage Soup
The Cabbage Soup Diet is probably the most popular fruit- and vegetable-based diet plan around, despite its mysterious origins. Some Internet versions of this diet refer to it as the Mayo Clinic or Sacred Heart Hospital diet, but these institutions deny any association with its origins, and Margaret Danbrot, author of The New Cabbage Soup Diet (St. Martins Paperbacks, 2004) and other popular diet books, says the diet has been around 30 years or more, but no one knows where it started. All sources, however, say that the Cabbage Soup Diet plan is intended only for short-term diet jump-start -- about a week to two weeks maximum -- and not for a long-term eating lifestyle.
Critics point out that the Cabbage Soup Diet alone may not provide all necessary nutrition for good health, and that it can be pretty boring. Restricting use of the diet to a short period should relieve both these concerns. Consult a doctor before starting a diet plan, however, and stop following the plan if you feel dizziness, gastric distress, or other unpleasant side effects.
The Cabbage Soup Diet starts with a broth-based vegetable soup full of nutrient-dense, fiber-filled vegetables like cabbage, onions, and green peppers. Exact ingredients vary and recipes can be found in Danbrot's book as well as at a number of websites such as that listed at Reference 3 below. This soup is very low-calorie, and any soup is slow to eat, giving your body time to fill up. The Cabbage Soup Diet Plan recommends eating as much of the soup as you can, together with specified additional foods -- fruit, a baked potato, beef -- on particular days for a one-week period. Its proponents report rapid weight loss and a sense of well-being and high energy.
Mediterranean Diet
The Mayo Clinic recommends adopting a Mediterranean Diet for heart health and general well-being. Rather than a specific diet plan, a Mediterranean Diet seeks to adopt the food and lifestyle choices of nations around the Mediterranean Sea that have low incidences of heart disease and cancer.
A Mediterranean Diet plan starts with significant intake of fruits and vegetables: The Mayo Clinic recommends 7 to 10 servings per day. Rely primarily on olive oil as a source of fat, limit or eliminate red meat but eat fish at least once a week. Snack on heart-healthy nuts or vegetable platters, and drink grape juice or, if it is in accord with your lifestyle and approved by your doctor, a glass of red wine on occasion.
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