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Hi, my name is Sarah Smith, and I'm a graduate student
at Eastern Illinois University getting my
Master's in dietetics.
I'm going to be talking to you today about the importance
of fruits and vegetables in everyone's diet.
Fruits and vegetables are important because they contain
vitamins and minerals necessary to sustain life.
They help to decrease your risk for getting chronic diseases
and they also help to decrease your blood pressure and to help
maintain your current weight or to lose weight if you need to.
Everyone needs about five to nine servings of
fruits and vegetables per day.
A 1/2 cup of fruit is about the size of a baseball.
So if your apple or your orange are about the size of a
baseball, then you are getting one serving of fruits.
Also, cooked vegetables are also 1/2 cup serving, and that
can also be the size of a baseball or a tennis ball.
Some easy ways to incorporate fruits and vegetables into
your diet would be, at breakfast you could increase
your vegetable consumption by adding sliced fresh vegetables
to an egg white omelette or you could slice up bananas or
have strawberries, raspberries, or blueberries added
to your hot or cold cereal.
For lunch, you could add a slice of lettuce or tomato
or cucumbers to your sandwich.
You could also add fresh fruit to a 1/2-cup serving
of low-fat yogurt.
For dinner, you could add fresh or frozen vegetables
to a casserole, such as peas, carrots, or broccoli.
You could also have fresh fruit as a dessert option for dinner.
You could add sliced fresh fruit to a slice of cheese cake,
low-fat frozen yogurt, or ice cream.
Throughout the day while you're snacking you can incorporate
sliced fresh vegetables with low-fat dip.
You could also have sliced fruit or dried fruit.
You could have a low-fat frozen yogurt smoothie
with some fresh fruit into that also.
For more information about getting more fruits and
vegetables into your diet, you can visit the American
Dietetics Association website at www.eatright.org, or
you could go to the website fruitsandveggiesmatters.org.
Thank you.