Thursday, October 1, 2009

Mama says eat your fruits and veggies!

Maybe it's not exactly news that Americans are terrible at eating fruits and vegetables. But according to the CDC, we're really, really terrible.

Not a single state in the country is meeting federal standards for daily fruit and vegetable consumption, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released earlier this week. Those standards: 75 percent of adults eat at least two servings of fruit, and 50 percent eat at least three servings of vegetables.

So how bad are we?

Well, in California, only 16 percent of adults are getting enough fruits and vegetables in their diet every day. The "good" news is that nearly 41 percent of us are actually eating enough fruit -- that's the best rate in the United States, not including the District of Columbia, which hit 42 percent. But only 26 percent are eating enough vegetables.



(So if only 16 percent are eating enough of both, that must mean that the fruit eaters aren't veggie eaters, and vice versa.)

Californians are better than the rest of the country at eating fruit (the national average is 33 percent) but worse with vegetables (the national average is 27 percent). Nationally, only 14 percent of adults get enough of both.

California is supposed to have some of the best fresh produce in the world. It's kind of sad that we can't even beat the (pathetic) national average for vegetables.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/chronrx/detail?&entry_id=48781

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