Bloody Mary Cocktail Counts as Veggie Serving

While "eat your vegetables!" isn't breaking news, more specific details on why eating more produce is good for our health continue to emerge from the world of science. The Experimental Biology Conference held each year is a confab of science nurds who gather to share their latest and greatest findings and nutrition is a big part of the program. The photo above is not from the conference!!! But, it does show my two friends Jackie and Anne enjoying advice on eating more vegetables in the form of a Bloody Mary. Low sodium veggie juice please.

Here are two examples of studies supporting the nutrition mantra to eat more fruits and vegetables.

· Drinking at least one glass of low sodium vegetable juice daily may help overweight people with metabolic syndrome achieve better weight loss results. A study, conducted at the Baylor College of Medicine, found that participants who drank at least 8-ounces of low sodium vegetable juice as part of a calorie-controlled DASH diet lost four pounds over 12 weeks, while those who followed the same diet but drank no juice lost one pound.

· Eating as little as one and a half servings of cherries can boost powerful antioxidants in the body. Through a first-of-its-kind study, scientists at the University of Michigan found that participants who ate just one and a half cups of frozen tart cherries increased their body’s antioxidant activity and had significantly increased levels of five different anthocyanins – the natural antioxidants that give cherries their RED color.