In the first part of this article I talked about why fruits and vegetables might be just what you need to give you the winning edge in managing your weight. (Fruits and Vegetables Best Choice for 2009) Today I would like to share my thoughts on how you might make it easier to regularly include more fruits and vegetables in your diet.

The cost of fresh fruits and vegetables especially off-season might dampen your enthusiasm for my suggestion. Unfortunately, some of the least healthy food is also the least expensive. There are many reasons for this including certain government policies that made sense 40-50 years ago but not any longer. However, that’s a topic for another day.

Hopefully we may see some changes in government policy and otherwise that might make fruits and vegetables more affordable in the near future. In the meantime, I have some suggestions that may help a little. When you plan your food budget do keep in mind the enormous health benefits of fruits and vegetables as well as the opportunity to more easily manage your weight.

Cost of Fruits and Vegetables

•Minimize your costs by buying fresh fruits and vegetables by season (whenever possible buy local and organic). Imported produce can sometimes be more expensive than what is grown in the United States.

•When fresh is limited or not available, choose to buy less expensive canned fruits or vegetables. You may also find frozen to be cheaper than fresh. The nutritional value of frozen is as good and might even be better than fresh. Canned produce may have somewhat less in the way of certain nutrients but is still a good choice.

(Note: Choose canned or frozen options without added sugar, syrup, cream sauces, or other ingredients that add calories.)

•Whenever possible, avoid buying pre-cut fruits and vegetables for enormous savings. The convenience may be nice but you pay dearly for that.

The cost of fruits and vegetables may or may not be an issue for you but what about meal and snack ideas? And what kind of simple changes might you make in your routine to make it more likely that fruits and vegetables are a part of your diet more often?

Tips for Simplifying

•Pick one day at the beginning of your week to wash and cut fruits and vegetables. Put each in a separate container, if necessary. (Add a little lemon juice to cut apples and pears to keep them from browning. Or just leave these whole to eat fresh as is.)

Now you have a supply of fruits and vegetables ready for snacks or to include in a meal later in the week. This will not only save you precious minutes when its time to cook but will also make it more likely you will grab one of these containers for a ready-to-eat, healthy, and low calorie snack.

•Add leafy greens (such as spinach, red leaf lettuce, romaine), tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, green peppers, and more to sandwiches and lighten up on the meat and cheese.

•Don’t forget fruit. Thinly sliced apples can make a great addition to a turkey or chicken sandwich for extra flavor and nutrition. Sliced bananas or, better yet, low calorie berries go well with peanut or other nut butters instead of jelly or jam.

•Add chopped veggies to broth based soups (whether homemade or canned), stir-fried dishes, pasta, omelets, and pizza toppings. Eat more veggies and there is less room for higher calorie pasta, rice, or bread.

•Strive for having half your plate at mealtime filled with fruits and vegetables. Do eat off of smaller plates for smaller portions and fewer calories.

•Potatoes eaten with the skin can be a healthy choice; however, do limit how much you eat. They have a high starch (carbohydrates) content and as such are more similar to bread or cereals with respect to calorie count.

Recipe Ideas

If you need a bit of inspiration when it comes to additional ideas on ways to prepare fruit or vegetables, what you may need are photos and recipes that make your mouth water. Here’s just a few of the places I go for inspiration both offline and on.

The next time you are at a shop with a magazine rack, flip through a few issues of some of the better cooking magazines. I especially like the magazines geared for vegetarians. You don’t need to be a vegetarian to get inspired and enjoy the recipes you’ll find!

The latest issue of Vegetarian times (January 2009) caught my eye with the lead story of “Lose Weight, Gain Energy: 35 satisfying recipes under 300 calories”. After only a minute or two looking at the enticing photos and recipes and I was hooked. I don’t buy magazines very often but this one came home with me!

No time for magazines? No problem. There are lots of great online sites for inspiration:

Check out Flickr photos (online) for pictures of vegetarian recipes from around the world. Not all of the photos will appeal to you (or feature fruits and vegetables) but the ones that do are sure to inspire you to be more creative with your meals and snacks.

Flickr Vegetarian Group

Have you had a chance to read my review article of some of the best online sites for low calorie and healthy recipes?

Healthy Low Calorie Recipes: 8 Super Sites

Veggie Meal Plans (A blog site with lots of good recipes and sometimes very appealing food photos.)

Fruits and Vegetables Matter

One of my favorite all around recipe sites is RecipeZaar. What I especially like is the ability to drill down and find specific kinds of recipes. I did a basic search for low calorie fruit recipes and came up with over 6,000 recipes. I took a look at the calorie counts for some of the recipes and many were on the high side. So I then chose to “filter by nutrition” and did a search for low calorie fruit recipes with less than 100 calories per serving.

This narrowed the results down to 198. At that point I could have chosen to filter by course (breakfast, snack, main dish, etc.), ingredient, preparation (time to make, simple, etc.) or occasion (seasonal, holiday, etc.). Very nice!

(Note: If the link for the filter for low calorie fruit recipes with 100 calories or less per serving doesn’t work, just do your own search at www.recipezaar.com following my tip.)

Low Calorie Fruit Recipes

A search at RecipeZaar for low calorie vegetable recipes with 100 calories or less per serving turned up 48 recipes:

Low Calorie Vegetable Recipes

For more about nutrition and the value of fruits and vegetables for weight loss you might want to read:

Fruits and Vegetables: Nutrition Source, Harvard School of Public Health

Last but not least, I wanted to share with you a list I came across at Health.com (Health magazine) for the 10 best supermarket chains. These are the stores selected by six prominent health experts as being the best of the largest chain stores for delivering the freshest and healthiest food possible.

These stores may not be available where you live. That doesn’t mean you are out of luck. There are a number of smaller chain stores and other grocery stores with an outstanding selection of healthy choices that did not make this list because of size.

In addition, some of the stores listed may not be the best for you based on cost. And just because a chain store may have received high marks in general doesn’t mean a particular branch store where you live is as good. It may not have the kind of management necessary to assure the same high quality guidelines as the same shop in another city.

1. Whole Foods
2. Safeway
3. Harris Teeter
4. Trader Joe’s
5. Hannaford
6. Albertson’s
7. Food Lion
8. Publix Super Markets
9. Pathmark
10. Super Target

If you have some time, I would encourage you to read the original article to see what some of these shops offer and what kinds of things matter when it comes to making healthy choices: America’s Healthiest Grocery Stores

Do start out the New Year with a plan. Eat more fruits and veggies. Good luck with this and best wishes for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight!

Although there is no such thing as a magic bullet when it comes to weight loss, fruits and vegetables may be as close as you will come to magic. Well…that may be a bit of a stretch but I do encourage you to make this the year you resolve to eat more fruits and vegetables. As a nutritionist this is my single most important tip for weight management AND better health. Having said that, fruits and vegetables can only work their “magic” if you understand why they matter, what to choose, and how you can easily incorporate more servings into your diet.

Isn’t it nice to have something you are encouraged to eat more often rather than hearing “don’t eat this” or “don’t eat that?” When it comes to your health, most experts including the Mayo Clinic, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), dietitians, and nutritionists would encourage you to eat all the fruits and vegetables you might want. However, it is still possible, though not as likely, to eat too much of a good thing when it comes to weight management.

Calories do matter. But don’t let that get you down. If you make the best choices you can eat quite a LOT of certain fruits and vegetables for very few calories. Do take a look at some of my previous articles for some ideas on what you might like best:

Healthy Low Calorie Fruit

Low Calorie Vegetables: 100 Calories or Less

Best Low Calorie, High Fiber, Summer Fruits and Vegetables

Fall Fruits and Vegetables: Low Calorie and High Fiber

Low Calorie, High Fiber Winter Fruits & Veggies

High Fiber Low Calorie Spring Fruits and Vegetables

Do limit your intake of dried fruit, fruit juice, and most fruit smoothies to keep your calorie count down. Also, limit added sugar and sauces made with sugar and/or fat. Here are some other overall guidelines for weight management:

Fruits and Vegetables for Weight Management

•For weight loss, you need to eat fewer calories then what you burn. You have calorie needs for physiological processes (such as breathing and keeping your heart beating), physical activity, and the digestion of food. Eat more than your calorie needs and it goes to fat!

•Recent research suggests that people may not limit what they eat based on calories alone but rather on calories and the VOLUME of food eaten. It seems that the volume or amount of food may influence satiety (the sense of being full) more than calories. It is the sense of fullness that signals most people to stop eating.

•Foods with low energy density (low number of calories by weight) have a greater volume than those that are high energy dense (high calorie foods).

•Both water and fiber increase the volume of foods and reduce energy density. Fresh fruits and vegetables have a high water and fiber content. This means they tend to be low in calories and energy density.

•Fruits and vegetables make good substitutes for foods of high energy density.

(Source: Adapted from “Can eating fruits and vegetables help people to manage their weight?” National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion)

The bottom line is that when you fill up on low calorie fruits and vegetables you can eat more total food for less calories. This, of course, will only work if you substitute or replace some of the high-energy dense foods you normally eat with low energy dense foods.

The added benefit of more fruits and vegetables is that you can improve your health while you manage your weight. Now I’d say that’s a good deal!

Health Benefits of Fruits and Vegetables

•Little in the way of calories or fat and no cholesterol

•Lots of vitamins (such as vitamin A and C), minerals, fiber, and antioxidants

•A diet low in fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol with plenty of fiber from fruits, vegetables, and whole grain breads and cereals may reduce the risk of diseases of the cardiovascular system (such as heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s) and cancer.

The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 2.7 million lives could be saved each year if we ate more fruits and vegetables.

O.K. so maybe you have good intentions of eating more fruits and vegetables but it just doesn’t happen. Is cost an issue? Or how about the need to get organized so that fruits and vegetables can be more easily incorporated into your diet without it taking a lot of time and effort? Maybe you’d like to get inspired with some new recipes. If any of these issues strike a chord with you, I have a few suggestions.

For Part 2 of this article check back in a couple days!

I wish you the very best for a wonderful and happy New Year of 2009!