This past Saturday, at 8:45 I left for our local farmers' market right here in Port Orange. I picked up fruits and vegetables for the next week. This week I picked up: limes, apples, strawberries, kale, cilantro, cucumber, avocado, carrots, celery, green pepper, and tomatoes among other things. Our farmers' market here has a great variety of fresh produce, enough to eat as snacks for my meal preparation.
I recently read about a study that shows how Eating more fruits and vegetables can help to keep things like depression away and improve your psychological state of mind.
Researchers at the Unversity of Otago in New Zealand studied the effects of participants eating more fruit and vegetables for 14 days. They posted their findings in the Journal PLOS One. 171 students were part of the study, aged 18 to 25 and were divided into three groups for 2 weeks.
The researchers recently reported their findings in the journal PLOS One.
The researchers enrolled 171 students aged between 18 and 25 to their study, and they were divided into three groups for 2 weeks.
- Group 1: Continued their normal eating pattern
- Group 2: This group was given two additional servings of fresh fruits and vegetables (including carrots, kiwi fruit, apples, and oranges)
- Group 3:This group was given prepaid produce vouchers and received text reminders to consume more fruits and vegetables.
Researchers were concentrating on looking at how this affected the students psychological health. They evaluated mood, vitality, motivation, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and other determinants of mental health and well-being.
Dr. Connor, one the researchers at the Department of Psychology discovered that participants who personally received extra fruits and vegetables consumed the most of these products over the 2 weeks, at 3.7 servings daily, and it was this group that experienced improvements in psychological well-being. In particular, these participants demonstrated improvements in vitality, motivation, and flourishing.
The other 2 groups did not show any improvement in physiological health or mood.
So here is another reason to increase your eating of fresh fruits and vegetables. Improve your mood, your well being and have less anxiety and depression. Add a piece or two of fruit to your everyday breakfast. Make a fruit or vegetable smoothie everyday. Simple as that. A little effort in using fruits and vegetables can make a big difference in your life.
Source: Eating more fruits, vegetables boosts psychological well-being in just 2 weeks
