What are Phytonutrients and Why are They Important to our Health? (part I)

You will hear the MonaVie blend referred to as "the highesailable today."  But what are phytonutrients and why are they essential to our health?  Once upon a time it was thought that fats, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals were all the nutrients necessary for growth and health.  Now we know there's another group of nutrients necessary for optimal health called phytonutrients.  Despite its high tech ring, "phytonutrient" (from the Greek phyton for "plant") simply means a "nutrient from a plant."  Molecular science is finally confirming what mother always told us: "Eat your fruits and vegetables."  The power-packed nutrients that give fruits and vegetables their many colors also provide a lot of Mother Nature's medicine.  While there are many phytos that have been identified, there are probably thousands more that remain to be discovered. The best known phytos are carotenoids, flavonoids, and isoflavones.  Carotenoids include yellow, orange, and red pigment in fruits and vegetables. Dark, green, leafy vegetables are rich in the carotenoid, beta carotene, but the usual yellow color is masked by the chloraphyll, the green pigment in the vegetables.  Flavonoids are reddish pigments, found in red grape skins and citrus fruits, and isoflavones can be found in peanuts, lentils, soy, and other legumes. You're familiar with vitamins, now we have "phytomins," which are less familiar, but equally important, health-promoting substances in food.   There is currently a sort of phyto information war going on. On the one side, pill-makers are trying to package and promote phytonutrient supplements as the new magic cure-all.  On the other side, researchers are trying to determine scientifically just what phytochemicals are in which foods and what good things they do for you. Here is information you need to know to separate the hype from the useful information:    Eat the real thing. Get your phytos from foods, not just from pills. Even reputable phyto supplement makers offer this grandmotherly advice. Like other nutrients, phytos operate under the biochemical principle of synergy (1+1=3). For example, flavonoids and carotenoids have more health-promoting properties when they are eaten together in the same food rather than when they are taken separately in a supplement.  Each one of the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of yet-undiscovered phytos helps each other biochemically in the food - and presumably also in the body.  Eating a whole tomato is better than popping a pill that contains a chemical isolated from a tomato.  By eating a few florets of broccoli you're not only getting the beta carotene you could get in a pill, but you're probably also getting the health benefits of hundreds or thousands of other phytos that don't even have names yet.  And, of course, you're getting vitamin C, fiber, and calcium, too. Eat variety. Because each class of phytos affects cellular well-being in different ways, the best way to take full advantage of the best medicine nature has to offer is to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. One phyto may bind a carcinogen to keep it from latching onto a cell; another may whisk carcinogens out of the cells; still another may handcuff free radicals before they are allowed to roam free in the body; still others stimulate the body's own enzymes to break up potential cancer-causing chemicals. Certainly, a multi-vegetable salad is more heart-healthy and cancer-protective than an apple. (Better still, eat the salad for lunch and have the apple for dessert.) Together, the synergistic union of fruits in the MonaVie blend reaches far beyond what any single fruit could accomplish.  It's the wide variety of unique and exotic fruits contained in the entire color spectrum that create the right balance of phytonutrients in our product.  Drinking four ounces of MonaVie Active on a daily basis provides the equivalent antioxidant capacity of 13 servings of common fruits and vegetables.

Raw Food: Raw Food and Skin Health

Nutrition

Nutrition