Healthy Living: Healthy Eating - Seeing Fruits and Veggies In a New Light.

Ever since I was a kid all I heard was "eat your vegetables".  I knew, even back in the day, that healthy eating was based on the amount of fruits and vegetables you ate every day.  Still is.  And I don't argue that the health benefits offered by fruits and vegetables are substantial.  Lots of fiber and all those antioxidants.  Of course, we didn't  know anything about antioxidants years ago; we only knew that our parents would probably make our lives miserable if we didn't eat our vegetables.

Today we have a lot more healthy eating choices that incorporate clever ways that we can get our daily need of fruits and vegetables.  One of them is brought to you by those wonderful folks that bring you V8 vegetable juice.  I couldn't drink V8 juice years ago, and I can't drink it to this day.  I know it's a good way to get your daily vegetables, but I just can't do it. Until now.

Cruising down the juice aisle recently I looked guiltily at the vegetable juice section and just as I was about to move along to the safer soda section, a new colorful juice bottle caught my eye.  "Hey, what is this?" I thought.  There was a new bottle of V8, but it was a strawberry banana smoothie.  Almost too good to be true, as I love smoothies.

So, I bought it, with some reservations about what it might taste like, and returned to my place to check it out.  After refrigerating the smoothie for several hours, I poured it out and tasted it.  It tasted just like a great strawberry banana smoothie should taste.  Thick and smooth, with only a hint of the beneficial fruits and vegetables that back up it's punch.  The company touts that every 8 ounces of juice contains a half cup of fruits and a half cup of vegetables while they state on the bottle that "the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend 2- 1/2 cups of a variety of vegetables and 2 cups fruit per day for a 2,000 calorie diet".  The bottle holds 36 ounces, so it can give you an excellent boost in reaching your daily need of fruits and vegetables and achieving healthy eating.

While I remain a protein eater at heart, it is good to know that there are more and more choices out there that can help us get the fruits and vegetables we need every day.  Though I will never even approach becoming a Vegan, I do know that fruits and vegetables are an important part of a heart healthy diet and I'll continue to look acceptable ways to get them into my diet every day.

Hopefully you can find ways to get more fruits and vegetables into your diet.  If you have some great ways, let me know and I'll share them with our readers.  Here's to healthy living and healthy eating.