How can eating 50% of your day as fruits and or non starchy veggies help to improve your health, energy and assist you with achieving a healthy weight?
According to the USDA, the average American eats over 5 lbs of food per day. Yes that’s right! The average American eats about 2000 lbs of food per year. 1996 lbs to be exact. That’s 5.4 lbs of food per day, per person. Americans average 688 lbs of fruits and vegetables per year. Specifically, that’s 273 lbs of fruit and 415 lbs of vegetables, which is 34% of our total intake in pounds.
In addition, only 1 in 10 Americans are eating the recommended amount of fruit and veggies, which is at least 2 cups fruit and 3 cups of veggies per day at a minimum. This is only 9% for veggies and 12% for fruit. Much of the fruit comes from fruit juice, not whole fruit, and much of the veggies come from potatoes and not green leafy and other colorful veggies. Potatoes are often in the form or french fries, hash browns, mashed potatoes (essentially loaded with less healthy fat) and not baked sweet or white potatoes.
Humans are both volume and weight eaters. Hunger can come from a need to consume enough volume and weight of food at each meal and throughout the day. Eating enough volume and weight usually implies we’ve eaten enough calories for survival.
How do you know if you are full after a meal? Our stomach, which is a flexible tissue, stretches and sends a signal via the vagus nerve to the hypothalamus in the brain signaling food satiety or fullness.
If at least 50% of everything you eat in weight or volume are fruits and non starchy vegetables, you’ll take in about 2.75- 3 lbs of both combined per day (1/2 of the 5.4 lbs we eat per day), lowering your total caloric intake for the day, while maintaining fullness. Fruits and non starchy veggies are mostly water and fiber. Water has no calories whether inside a food or inside a glass.
Fiber also has little to no absorbable calories as humans can’t digest and absorb the calories from most types of fiber. Humans may absorb 2 calories per gram of soluble fiber, but zero calories from insoluble fiber. Fiber moves through the small intestines where our calories are usually absorbed, and then heads to the large intestine. In the large intestine, aka colon, our beneficial bacteria (probiotics) consume fiber as fuel. So, fiber serves as a source of fuel for our probiotics and not for us.
Take home? Strive to make at least half of everything you eat fruits and non starchy vegetables. Increase from about 1/3rd of intake that most Americans consume, to at least 1/2 to 3/4 for maximum health and weight loss. Also, aim for non starchy veggies like greens, salads, and other colorful vegetables, instead of starchy processed veggies like fries and hash browns.
Have a healthy day!