If vegetables were a drug, they would be the #1 best seller! A paper published in the Journal of Epidemiology analyzed 95 studies looking into the benefits of eating fruit and vegetables for more than 2 million people on multiple continents. After taking other factors into account like smoking, activity levels, and weight, they found that eating 10 servings of fruit and veg a day was associated with a 24 percent reduced risk of heart disease, a 28% reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, a 33 percent reduced risk of stroke, and a 13 percent reduced risk of total cancer. There is no drug available from any pharmaceutical company that comes anywhere close to these miraculous results, not only that, but vegetables have zero side effects and cost only a fraction of what drugs costs.
My free meal planning software at CustomMealPlanner.Com has made over 2 million meal plans for fitness and health minded people. The most frequently reported feedback is that people think there are “too many vegetables”. Now you know why. Not only are non-starchy vegetables one of the easiest ways to lose bodyfat but I have always intuitively known the importance of vegetables and now we have a huge meta-study that points to the value of vegetables.
Statins are one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, its a market worth 29 Billion, thats $29,000,000.000 – yep you read that right. 26% of people over 40 take these statin drugs in an effort to lower their cholesterol and reduce risk of heart attack and stroke. Not only do these statin drugs have a lot of bad side effects, but they are not as effective as vegetables! Statins only lower the risk of stroke by 17% compared to the 33% lower risk from eating vegetables. 29 Billion dollars would buy a heck of a lot of vegetables.
What does it say about our society that people would rather pop a bunch of really expensive pills and eat their Big Mac and pizza rather than eating a healthy diet consisting of minimally processed foods and lots of vegetables?
If vegetables were a drug, they would be the #1 best seller
Dagfinn Aune, Edward Giovannucci, Paolo Boffetta, Lars T. Fadnes, NaNa Keum, Teresa Norat, Darren C. Greenwood, Elio Riboli, Lars J. Vatten, Serena Tonstad; Fruit and vegetable intake and the risk of cardiovascular disease, total cancer and all-cause mortality–a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies. Int J Epidemiol 2017 dyw319. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyw319