Phytonutrients Matter - So Get Your 5!

Where can you find the most colourful, nutrient-rich food? Your local farm market and the produce aisle in your grocery store!

All those vibrantly coloured fruits and vegetables are loaded with phytonutrients – the organic compounds found in plants that are thought to promote human health.

“Phytonutrients provide a range of health benefits,” says Don Pusateri, principal scientist for the Nutrilite brand. “That’s why fruits and vegetables are key components of a healthy diet, contributing many vitamins, minerals and fibre, in addition to phytonutrients.”

Perhaps no one recognised the power of phytonutrients more than Nutrilite founder Carl F. Rehnborg.

Back in the 1930s when Carl was studying nutrition, he saw that people often didn’t get enough fruits and veggies in their diets. What if a supplement could provide vitamins, minerals and “associated food factors” – what we now know as phytonutrients – to help fill in those dietary gaps?

Thus was born the first multivitamin/multimineral supplement, complete with plant nutrients, sold in North America.

A lot has happened since then. Today, the vast majority of adults worldwide eat fewer than the minimum recommended 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, as recommended by the World Health Organization.* In fact, most of us would have to double our intake of fruits and veggies to meet this recommendation!

Our advice?

• Get your 5! Eat 5 or more servings from a variety of fruits and veggies every day, for health benefits from head to toe.
• Consider supplements, to fill in any nutritional gaps in your diet

*See: http://www.who.int/elena/titles/fruit_vegetables_ncds/en/