Nutrition is hard.
May. 26th, 2005 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whispercricketI found a really great site for getting in depth information about which foods (fruits, vegetables, legumes, spices) are considered healthy and the current research as to why - which phytochemicals they contain, which studies have shown what benefits, etc. I'm a little overwhelmed by the massive amount of nutrition information, but I think it's great that they're actually working to find the basis for what has been known forever (like, "eat spinach - it's good for you"), as well as benefits from foods - I guess spices are foods too - less common in standard Western diets (like turmeric).
The site is called World's Healthiest Foods - it's run by a non-profit organization that's pretty much made up of a group of people starting a new company to provide targeted nutritional analyses (for full disclosure - they reference studies that appear valid).
They also have a basic diet analysis quiz you can take, a list of the most nutritious foods (and why, and how to store and prepare them), and a list of the dirty dozen fruits and vegetables that have the highest amount of pesticide residue (if you can't get all organic fruits and vegetables, these are the ones to prioritize highest - I don't generally get organic apples or grapes or celery or...most of those, actually, so I was a bit surprised).
They also have some very interesting information (to me, at least) about the actual nutritional benefits of organic foods - such as a study that found that organic oranges, at half the size of conventional oranges, had up to 30% more Vitamin C. Also, conventional oranges often are a brighter color because their skins are injected with an artificial dye called Citrus Red Number 2.
[This all makes sense to me because a lot of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables are designed to protect them against disease and pests, so if they are protected externally, they may not need to produce as much. Also, the soil on conventional factory farms, at least in this country, is scarily depleted, especially since they stopped encouraging crop rotation in the 1970s.]
The site is called World's Healthiest Foods - it's run by a non-profit organization that's pretty much made up of a group of people starting a new company to provide targeted nutritional analyses (for full disclosure - they reference studies that appear valid).
They also have a basic diet analysis quiz you can take, a list of the most nutritious foods (and why, and how to store and prepare them), and a list of the dirty dozen fruits and vegetables that have the highest amount of pesticide residue (if you can't get all organic fruits and vegetables, these are the ones to prioritize highest - I don't generally get organic apples or grapes or celery or...most of those, actually, so I was a bit surprised).
They also have some very interesting information (to me, at least) about the actual nutritional benefits of organic foods - such as a study that found that organic oranges, at half the size of conventional oranges, had up to 30% more Vitamin C. Also, conventional oranges often are a brighter color because their skins are injected with an artificial dye called Citrus Red Number 2.
[This all makes sense to me because a lot of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables are designed to protect them against disease and pests, so if they are protected externally, they may not need to produce as much. Also, the soil on conventional factory farms, at least in this country, is scarily depleted, especially since they stopped encouraging crop rotation in the 1970s.]
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-27 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-28 02:51 am (UTC)Wow... very interesting site... it really sucks you in and is, indeed, a tad overwhelming.
I never knew so much about B vitamins before. I think all of my previous musings about why I need to eat more of them have been correct. :-)
thanks for the link...
no subject
Date: 2005-05-29 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-29 02:08 am (UTC)(The top five things it suggested were spinach, mustard greens, a couple of other greens, and romaine lettuce.)