Archive for category: Health & Nutrition

Infographic: The Benefits of Fruits & Vegetables

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Today’s blog post focuses on a great infographic from PrecisionNutrition about the powerful benefits of eating fruits & vegetables. The importance of phytonutrients is greatly underestimated. PrecisionNutrition does an incredible job at showcasing how different colors of fruits & vegetables contain special benefits. Read through the infographic to learn more.

 

Key Points From the Infographic

To Maximize Health, Eat 1 Cup Per Day of Each Color

  • “Color deficiencies” in phytonutrients increase our risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer, diabetes, and more.

Green Fruits & Vegetables are Rich in These Phytonutrients

  • EGCG, isothiocyanate, lutein, zeaxanthin, isoflavones, flavonoids, coumestans

Red Fruits & Vegetables are Rich in These Phytonutrients

  • Lycopene, ellagic acid, caffeoylquinic acids, hydroxybenzoic acids

Yellow/Orange Fruits & Vegetables are Rich in These Phytonutrients

  • Alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, hesperetin, beta-cryptoxanthin, flavonols, terpenoids, phthalides

White Fruits & Vegetables are Rich in These Phytonutrients

  • Flavonols, allicin, quercetin, sulfides

Purple/Blue Fruits & Vegetables are Rich in These Phytonutrients

  • Anthocyanins, resveratrol, hydroxycinnamic acids

NutriFusion® Delivers Stabilized Phytonutrients

We all know that food processing causes a lot of challenges for manufacturers. Delivering natural nutrition through the process is very difficult. So, we developed NutriFusion® to help packaged and processed food manufacturers deliver whole fruit & vegetable nutrition through processing to the end product. Our patent pending method stabilizes the vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients from fruits & vegetables through the entire food processing system. We have a variety of special blends called GrandFusion® that deliver on the different colors mentioned above. We can also create custom blends to meet your specific needs. Our ingredients come from non-GMO, organic produce. Click the button below to learn more about the science and research behind NutriFusion® .

USDA Fruit and Vegetable Program Stops Childhood Obesity

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In July of 2015, the University of Arkansas released the results from a new study on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. The program is intended to help elementary schools increase the amount of fruit and vegetables offered to students. The USDA believes this program can help our children overcome many of the challenges with childhood obesity.

 

University of Arkansas Research Study

U of A sampled elementary schools throughout their state once the FFVP began. They found that childhood obesity rates dropped from 20% to 17%. While it is early in the program, this is some of the first research to support the idea that fruit and vegetable consumption can lead to decreases in weight.

The study calculated that the fruit and vegetable program costs were about $50 to $75 per child per year to reduce the obesity rate by 3 percent. That’s a staggeringly small cost compared to the $280 to $339 per-student per-year cost of an effort to reduce childhood obesity by just 1 percent as estimated by other researchers in 2011.

“By this measure, our results suggest that the fresh fruit and vegetable program is a very cost-effective obesity prevention tool,” Nayga said. “Moreover, prevention of childhood obesity is in addition to the other nutritional benefits that come from increased fruit and vegetable consumption.”

Qian, Nayga, and Thomsen worked with Arkansas Center for Health Improvement research director Heather Rouse. Their work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Arkansas Biosciences Institute. The study was published in the June 2015 journal Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.

For the full article: Childhood Obesity Study

For more information: http://aaes.uark.edu

 

How Can NutriFusion® Help Tackle Childhood Obesity?

Our patent-pending process allows us to stabilize the vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables. NutriFusion® fruit and vegetable ingredients are being used to power the nutrition in a wide variety of packaged foods across the world. We believe our products can support the USDA’s program by being mixed in with a variety of beverages and foods at schools across the U.S. Our children wouldn’t have to sacrifice taste and would still get their daily value of natural vitamins and minerals from fruits and vegetables. Together, we can tackle childhood obesity.

Focus on Nutrition and Not Weight for Health

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In August of 2015, Medical News Today published a post on a study for improving your health through a focus on nutrition and not your weight. In our post, we reveal a few of the insights from the recent FASEB Journal research study.

If you are watching what you eat, working out, and still not seeing improvements in your cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc., here’s some hope. A new report appearing in the August 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal suggests that inflammation induced by deficiencies in vitamins and minerals might be the culprits. In this report, researchers show that – in some people – improvement results in many of the major markers of health when nutritional deficiencies are corrected. Some even lost weight without a change in their diet or levels of activity.

“It is well known that habitual consumption of poor diets means increased risk of future disease, but clearly this is not a compelling enough reason for many to improve their eating habits,” said Bruce Ames, Ph.D., a senior scientist at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, director of their Nutrition and Metabolism Center, and a professor emeritus of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “However, a relatively easy intervention with something like the nutrient bar used in this study may help people to realize the positive impact that a diet with adequate nutrition can have in their daily lives, which may be a stronger incentive for change.”

To make their Ames and colleagues undertook three clinical trials in which adults ate two nutrient bars each day for two months. Participants acted as their own controls, meaning that changes in a wide variety of biochemical (e.g., HDL-c, LDL-c, insulin) and physical (e.g., blood pressure, weight) measurements were recorded in each individual over the two-month period. People who were overweight/obese moved in a healthier metabolic direction (e.g., improved HDL, LDL, insulin, glucose, etc.), and some lost weight by just eating small, low-calorie, nutrient bars each day for two months, without any additional requirements.

NutriFusion® Can Make a Difference

As seen in this study, nutrition is continually being connected to a healthy lifestyle. There are so many options and ideas of what nutrition means. For us, nutrition is natural. We have created a way to help packaged food companies deliver natural, non-GMO nutrition to their customers through our proprietary blends. Our products deliver natural, complete vitamins and minerals only from whole, organic fruits and vegetables. We are excited to be a part of the food revolution solving nutrition and obesity problems all over the world.