- Fruits, vegetables, and whole foods provide essential flavonoids, vitamins, and minerals that support overall health.
- Nutrient-dense foods support heart, brain, immunity, energy, and long-term vitality for you and your family.
- Flavonoid supplements can help optimize your diet.
How are you doing with your fruit and veggie intake? The nutrients found in these and other whole foods are required to counteract numerous factors that stress and age your body. At times, it is good to review your diet to get a bigger picture of health. Take a few minutes to consider this information and empower you and your family’s choices to stack the deck of health in your favor today and lifelong!
Factors that Stress and Age Your Body
Several factors stress and age your body. Whether it is ultra-processed food, high sugar beverages, germs, environmental compounds, or unhealthy behaviors, we are continuously exposed to elements that cause cellular wear and tear, faster aging, and proinflammatory stress reactions. Compounds such as TNF-a, interleukins (IL-1beta, IL-6, IL-8, etc), prostaglandin A2, and others are released in response to things such as:
• Alcohol, excess
• Dental problems, tooth decay, hidden infections
• Drug-nutrient depletions, active and inactive ingredients in medications
• Eating disorders
• Excessive exercise
• Food additives, colorings, preservatives
• Food and environmental allergens
• Foods and beverages: ultra processed, calorie-rich, nutrient poor
• Formaldehyde/aldehydes and other chemicals
• Glyphosate and other herbicides/pesticides
• Gut dysbiosis, bacterial LPS toxins
• Heavy metals, plastics, plasticizers, glues, solvents
• Increased intestinal permeability/Leaky Gut
• Mold
• Processed seed oils
• Restrictive or poorly implemented diets
• Sedentary lifestyle
• Sleep deprivation or excess
• Sugar, added and artificial sweeteners
• Tobacco, nicotine and vaping products
• Trauma
• Viral, bacterial, fungal, parasite infections
To help protect against and mitigate these stressors, you must provide your body with real food. Too many individuals fall short or succumb to unhealthy choices, creating a loss of health over the years often with extraordinary costs.
Health Care Costs
Our country’s physical and mental health continues a devastating downward trend, ranking 61st in global health. Total health care spending in the U.S. was $4.9 trillion in 2023 with a projected 7.1% yearly increase. $450 billion was spent on prescription drugs alone with an expected 11.4% annual growth. These trends cannot be sustained. Change must occur and it starts with personal behaviors and helping others make informed choices and supporting accountability.
USDA Dietary Guidelines for 2025-2030: Eat Real Food
The recently updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 is simply “Eat Real Food”. The new Food Pyramid now recommends higher protein, dairy, healthy fats, vegetables and fruits with less whole grains and avoidance of ultra-processed foods. Guidelines include:
Protein Goal: 1.2 – 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. Healthy choices include eggs, seafood, poultry, meats, full-fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados. Choose organic, pasture-raised, or wild-caught when possible. Raw or dry roasted seeds and nuts are preferred rather than roasted with seed oils.
Vegetables: At least 3 servings per day. Fruit: At least 2 servings per day. Fresh, frozen, or canned are acceptable. Avoid canned products with added sugar or sweeteners of any type. Ideal intake is 5 or more vegetables and 4-5 fruits per day.
Whole Grains: 2-4 servings per day. Avoid or reduce refined, ultra-processed carbohydrates.
Additional recommendations included: Avoid highly processed packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat, or other foods that are salty or sweet, such as chips, cookies, and candy that have added sugars and sodium (salt). Instead, prioritize nutrient-dense foods and home-prepared meals. When dining out, choose nutrient-dense options.
What’s in Your Grocery Cart?
In conversations with people from all walks of life, it is common to hear “I don’t eat enough vegetables and/or fruits.” Simply observing consumers at grocery stores often shows shopping carts full of processed, packaged foods and beverages. Stores are filled with endless aisles of these manufactured nutrient poor foods designed to tickle your taste buds and keep you coming back for more.
We face food choices every day. While many may know what “real foods” are, many youth and adults lack the knowledge on how fresh, whole food is grown or raised and how to prepare it. Instead, they resort to processed foods like chicken nuggets, burgers, mac ‘n cheese, ramen noodles, pop tarts, or other fast food/junk food that lacks nutrients. We must help them make informed choices and understand why real foods are so important to our bodies!
Why is it Important to Consume Fruits & Vegetables?
Fruits and vegetables contain numerous bioactive compounds necessary for health. These include phytochemicals (flavonoids, carotenoids, polyphenols), vitamins (vitamin A precursors, vitamin C, folate, etc.), and minerals (calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc.), nitric oxide precursors, and several other compounds.
Flavonoids: One Category of Important Nutrients
A brief review of flavonoids provides insight into how important these types of nutrients are to health and function. As you learn, think about how you and your family currently fit into this picture with and without these nutrients. Imagine further, a lifelong lifestyle of this versus a life of ultra-processed foods. Think about what Olympic and worldclass athletes choose for their diets while in training, performance, and recovery.
Flavonoids are antioxidants. They support healthy nitric oxide levels, protect against LDL cholesterol oxidative stress, reduce reactive oxygen species, and enhance glutathione activities. Flavonoids modulate NF-kappa B, cytokines, IL-1beta, arachidonic acid, and numerous other proinflammatory compounds while they enhance the production of beneficial immune modulators and cytokines, etc. that buffer against inflammatory oxidative stress.
Furthermore, flavonoids support and protect cellular DNA synthesis, mitochondria function, cell membrane function, and aid immune activities that protect against immune toxins, biofilms and pathogens. They regulate numerous cell signaling pathways that protect against other types of oxidative stress.
These actions and others protect the cardiovascular system, brain and nervous system, kidneys, liver, pancreas, respiratory tract, gastrointestinal system, immune-spleen function, endocrine glands, bones and joints, skin, eyes and retina, and support cellular clean-up pathways for dysfunctional cells. Flavonoids and other essential nutrients provide a buffer zone of protection and repair against the long list of factors that age and stress your body.
Flavonoids support brain health to keep memory sharp and promote focus and concentration for school or work. They protect cardiovascular health to keep blood moving smoothly through 60,000 miles of blood vessels, as well as cholesterol and blood sugar management and utilization. They protect your mitochondria which is essential for energy production in every organ and tissue in your body. They help you keep a healthy glow about your skin, protect your bones and joints, and so much more.
Real Foods Have Flavonoids
If your vegetable intake has historically been lacking, it’s time for a breakthrough! It’s time to bridge the gap between the “real foods” health recommendations and the high calorie, nutrient poor, Western diet.
Apples, berries, citrus fruits, grapes, onions, olive oil, green and black tea are rich sources of flavonoids. Additional sources include hot peppers, parsley, celery, mint, chamomile, kale, lettuce, tomatoes, bananas, pears, peaches, red wine, potatoes, and other fruits and vegetables. Flavonoids are also found in dark chocolate, cinnamon, pecans, pistachios, thyme, soybeans, legumes and other whole foods and spices.
Flavonoids include nutrients such as quercetin, luteolin, fisetin, silymarin, nobiletin, tangeretin, grape seed extract, green tea extract, and many others.
How does your diet fare with these “real foods”? A lack of or omission of these nutrient dense foods creates a substantial strain on your body, like a type of health bankruptcy. Flavonoids and “real foods” are necessary to counteract the wear and tear brought on by the life stress, pro-inflammatory factors listed above.
Need to Optimize Beyond Your Diet?
If you need some help to optimize your flavonoid, antioxidant, and fruit and veggie intake, we have options!
Quercetin Phytosome + Luteolin is a superior bioavailable form of quercetin combined with luteolin, both highly prized bioflavonoids for whole body support.
Fisetin is a nootropic or smart flavonoid best known for cognitive health but outshines other flavonoids for anti-aging effects. Fisetin is also found in Brain Protector.
Lipid Helper provides a combination of silymarin/milk thistle extract, niacin and pterostilbene, a prized polyphenol for heart health. Silymarin is also found in Daily Detoxify. Pterostilbene is also available as a stand-alone supplement.
Leptinal provides nobiletin and tangeretin bioflavonoid extracts with omega-3 EPA/DHA, omega-6 GLA, and vitamin E tocotrienols. This unique, premiere blend of nutrients provides essential fatty acids with antioxidants for superior support for the cardiovascular system, brain, metabolism, skin and your whole body!
Grape Seed Extract has a long record of use for collagen support, but it also supports beneficial nitric oxide and endothelial lining support for cardiovascular health. It also protects microglial cells in the brain from oxidative stress and helps buffer histamine for immune health. Grape seed extract is also found in Cardio Helper and Performa Plus.
Green Tea Extract is a rich source of EGCG or catechins, a powerful type of flavonoid used for skin, brain, heart, blood sugar, cholesterol metabolism, fat burning, and overall anti-aging support. We use only the highest quality green tea available.
Stack the deck of health in your favor with real foods rich in nutrients like flavonoids.
Additional Resources
Quercetin Phytosome & Luteolin: Dynamic Duo for Immune Health and Longevity
Fisetin: The Natural Senolytic for Anti-Aging and Healthy Living
Pterostilbene: A Timeless Health Tonic for Longevity and Vitality
Leptinal – Understanding the Vast Effects of this Unique Nutrient Blend
Grape Seed Extract: Versatile and Valued Antioxidant
Get Glowing Skin with Green Tea Extract
Chronic Venous Insufficiency – Managing Stagnant Fluids and Inflammation in the Legs
