I have put together Vegetables - their health benefits and why we eat them as more than just a book about vegetables. This guide, from HealthDreams, explains the health benefits of each of the 36 featured vegetables, with simple facts about each product. At a time when very few people manage to eat the bare minimum of 5 A DAY, this gives us food for thought and will hopefully encourage people to look at their vegetables in an entirely different light.

People have been eating and cultivating vegetables for thousands of years. Hippocrates himself identified them as a way of life, literally! Over the time that our species evolved, nature supplied food. This food gave our ancestors the energy to allow them to hunt and gather, but also vital nutrients and vitamins to maintain health.

Eating fruit and vegetables is an essential part of life and without them we miss out on important nutrients. This book re-introduces us to a selection of the common vegetables available in most stores today. I am passionate about maintaining good health and strongly believe I can pass on this passion to others simply by telling them why we eat the vegetables that we do. The book also includes a table of nutrients to enable consumers to select the vegetables that can provide a balanced supply of essential vitamins and minerals, reinforcing the 5 A DAY message.

Sometimes, it is the simple things that are the best. The format of this book is so simple and obvious, it makes it easy to understand why we need to re-introduce ourselves to basic food items. Government statistics say that one in three of us will get cancer at some stage in our life and one in three will have heart disease. One in four are overweight or obese. This could lead to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and/or one of many other lifestyle diseases.

But for 60 years, we have been blessed with a fantastic health service that attempts to treat us if we are ill or diseased. Although many criticise the NHS, it is a system that is suffering from its own success and because we are so reliant on it, we are complacent about our health and do not, as a nation, do enough to keep ourselves healthy.

The government and the NHS itself realise that this has to change - plans are in place to encourage people to be more active and eat a better diet; the reason for this is to make us more responsible for our own health.

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