HEALTH AND NUTRITIONAL BENEFITS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

HEALTH AND NUTRITIONAL BENEFITS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Eating vegetables provides a lot of health benefits – people who eat more of vegetables and fruits as a part of an overall diet are likely to have a reduced risk of chronic disease. Vegetable provide nutrient vital for health and maintenance of the body, it may reduce the risk of heart disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

Most vegetables are naturally low in fat and calories. None have cholesterol. Vegetables are important sources of nutrients, including potassium, dietary fiber, folate (folic acid), vitamin A, and vitamin C.

Diets rich in potassium may help to maintain healthy blood pressure. Folate (folic acid) helps the body form red blood cells.

It is well established that pathogenic microorganism associated with whole or fresh cut poroduce can cause disease outbreaks, thereby demonstrating the need for improved mitigation efforts to reduce the risk associated with these products. Issues related to outbreaks, surface contamination, mild processing, and mitigation strategies for produce have been recently reviewed (Beuchat 1998.

There are variety of methods used to reduce the population of microorganisms in minimally processed fruits and vegetables. Each method has distinct advantage depending on the type of produce, mitigation protocol and other type of variables.

The best method to eliminate pathogens from produce is to prevent contamination in the first place. However this is not always possible and the need to wash and sanitize minimally processed fruits and vegetables remains of paramount importance to prevent disease outbreak. It should be noted that washing and sanitizing are unlikely to totally eliminate all the pathogens after the produce is contaminated.

Therefore, it is important to use washing and sanitizing protocols that are efficient.