Natural Health Foods -
Grow and Eat Vegetables and Fruit

According to Dr. Laurence J. Trueman, a molecular biologist and biochemist, gardeners who grow their own fruit and vegetables could be the healthiest people.

You will be saving money by eating natural health foods instead of buying expensive supplements to compensate for the items lacking your diet.

Dr. Trueman who advocates eating 400g (14oz) of fruit and vegetables a day saying that these provide protection against super oxide radicals; these are known to be major causes of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Surely these must be the real natural health foods.

There is increasing evidence that some of these may not only protect against cancer, but actively slow the growth and in some cases kill cancer cells; e.g. brassicas may be able to kill cancer cells and watercress may be able to kill lung cancer cells.

Dr. Trueman is careful to use the words ‘may be able’ and ‘could’ in his statements, but there is now increasing evidence that people who do eat their ‘five-a-day’ are usually slimmer and fitter than those who do not. Add this to knocking smoking on the head and this will improve health even more.

Variety is the spice and of life. It is important to eat a wide variety of fruit and vegetables in an equally wide a range of colours as possible - something that gardeners are always doing as they're keen to experiment with new things - such as multi-coloured carrots.

Keen gardeners also know the value of such brightly coloured vegetables as beetroot, peppers, tomatoes etc.

Selenium is a co-factor in helping the effectiveness of fruit and vegetables fight these diseases. Selenium is rare in British soils, but is common in manure and manure-based fertilisers, and so is present in soils fed with these substances.

Therefore if you make your own compost adding some manure to your stack should do the trick. See our page Gardening Diary for tips on how to easily manage a compost heap.

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Freshness is a major factor in the effectiveness of fruit and vegetables to fight disease, and the best way of getting the freshest produce available is to grow and harvest your own. There is nothing like the taste of a corn cob picked, taken straight to the kitchen, plunged into boiling water, cooked and eaten. Tomatoes picked, washed and sliced up into a salad. New potatoes, without the high price – and so it goes on.

Children could be encouraged to like natural health food by being shown how to grow radish which give a quick result. They will also enjoy growing marrows, pumpkins and runner beans – all spectacular and appealing to children.

Stress is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease. Gardening is known to reduce stress. This hobby has a double benefit – producing your own freshly grown natural health foods - fruit and vegetables - enjoying the benefits of being outside in the fresh air, taking exercise and releasing your stress.

All this for the price of a few packets of seeds! Surely there are few other hobbies with all these benefits at such a low cost?

Therefore, taking all the facts at present available, it would seem that there are real health benefits in growing your own natural halth foods - the five-a -day - as well as the trick of saving money.