The Farmer’s Market – Fresh is Best!
It’s a wonderful time of the year for fresh fruits and vegetables. I am fortunate to live in Southern California and have close access to the Torrance market. In order to sell produce at the farmer’s market it has to come directly from a California farmer. Today I picked up strawberries, blueberries, nectarines, apples, tomatoes, purple potatoes, green beans, okra, onions, cucumber, and cabbage. Some good things about these choices:
You can see from this list why I say that strawberries are one of the best fruits, especially when you are trying to watch the calories.
Blueberries are excellent too and I was surprised to see how much fiber they have. Blueberries are known for their antioxidants which “help neutralize harmful by-products of metabolism called free radicals that can lead to cancer and other age related diseases.” This is from the Blueberry Council website. I do not always buy organic but the farmer today told me that his blueberries were organic and that most blueberries are not. A search in Google for blueberries pesticides does come up with quite a few discussions on pesticides on blueberries so I am glad I bought organic today (although they were more expensive).
Nectarines – I just love to eat them and they are high in vitamin C and potassium and a fair amount of fiber and antioxidants.
And you know what they say about apples, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. This saying dates back to 1866 according to the Friedman School of Nutrition. I was on a popular diet plan about 20 years ago that included 2 fresh fruits every day, one of which was an apple. They encouraged us to get the biggest, juiciest apple we could find. Too bad I didn’t know about the farmer’s market back then!
I am doing this first week of my diet/exercise program by myself, with the help of this blog! I also plan to research some of the online diet programs and when I find one I like, give it a try and write a review. One of my main criteria for choosing a plan will be that it has a strong emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables (no diet shakes or pre-packaged foods for me except as occasional fill in when there is no time to prepare fresh).