5 FRUITS & VEGETABLES: MISSING THE POINT!

Who doesn’t know that it’s recommended to eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day? 🙋🏽‍♂️
But who knows that it actually means 5 SERVINGS of fruits AND/OR vegetables? 🫣

Did you know that the main objective is to help you estimate the recommended daily intake of vitamins, minerals, and fiber? 🧏🏻‍♀️ And that the secondary objective is to regulate the amount of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins consumed daily? 🤔🤗

Modern urban diets focus heavily on long-shelf-life foods, which most fruits and vegetables are not. 🍆🥒 As soon as fruits and vegetables reach maturity and are harvested, their vitamin and mineral content begins to slowly decrease until they are consumed 🌋. Furthermore, the moment they are cut or crushed, their nutrients begin a rapid decline 👎🏿. That is why fruits like bananas 🍌, avocados 🥑, and apples 🍏 oxidize and darken when sliced. It is also why smoothies separate after a few minutes. ⏲ .

For fruits and vegetables to truly nourish you, they must first be harvested at maturity and consumed within five days 🖐🏼 of being picked. And most importantly, fruits should be eaten on an empty stomach. Fruits are digested in less than an hour. Eating them after foods that take 3️⃣ to 8️⃣ hours to digest reduces their usefulness for the body.

It is important to 👍🏿 value each fruit for its specific properties. Fruits that oxidize when cut are telling you that slicing them is not the best way to consume them. Crushing them begins a digestive process outside the body, depriving you of a significant portion of their nutrients. 🙅🏿‍♀️

So simply eat your fruits whole, cook your vegetables minimally, and you will absorb their nutrients optimally. 🤷🏾‍♀️ When you cook a vegetable that can be eaten raw, or when you cook fruit, you lose some nutrients. Studies agree that moderate heat can reveal others. In any case, what we call “raw food” is clearly meant to remind us that cooking it is unnecessary. 🛎️

There are two ways to preserve the most delicate nutrients (vitamins and minerals): flash freezing and dehydration. Fermentation, on the other hand, increases nutrient bioavailability, reveals new nutrients, and makes foods easier to digest.

🚛 Flash-freezing plants, usually located close to fields, rapidly lower foods from room temperature to well below zero 🥶 within minutes. This process preserves the integrity of the food’s molecules. When cooked, they retain the same richness and appearance as if they were fresh 🥰. In contrast, regular freezing often leaves fruits and vegetables with a drained look and rubbery texture. 😵‍💫.

Dehydration produces dried fruits and vegetables. It involves sustained exposure to very dry, warm air 🥵. This moderate heat removes some nutrients but concentrates others and especially enhances flavors 🤩.

Consuming fruits and vegetables that are
❌ harvested before maturity,
❌ transported for weeks,
❌ or loaded with chemicals and shipped around the world without changing appearance, does not nourish you at all. In fact, it does the opposite.

✌🏽 Choose chemical-free frozen fruits and vegetables or dried ones. NJ Nature recommends 4️⃣ fruits that dehydrate easily and naturally. These fruits store and dry well without special equipment: tamarind, baobab fruit, néré, and red hibiscus (bissap). Native to the Sahel, they are particularly nourishing.

They are practically complete foods, which is why they are often described as superfoods 💪🏿. These fruits naturally preserve themselves for months ⏳ without special treatment. They are therefore perfectly suited to the needs of urban dwellers. Baobab fruit and néré are especially filling 🤤, allowing sedentary people to eat well without gaining weight. That is what NJ Nature SOLUTIONS NATURE 💡 means living close to nature from your apartment. 👍.

When we think of fruits, we usually think of the ones represented by emojis on our phones 🍏🍓🥝🫑🥦. However, let us remember that the designers of these devices, even if they have theoretically traveled every road in the world, do not know all of our plant resources. The palm fruit sprout, shea fruit, African locust bean, and many others deserve a place in our diets.

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NJ Nature, SOLUTIONS NATURE
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