Many youngsters and adults eat no plant foods at all. These are the people who often get heart disease or cancer early in life. The great nutritional discovery of the 1990s is that plant foods contain hundreds of phytochemicals that protect our bodies against cancer, heart disease and a host of other degenerative diseases. Phytochemicals even protect against cataracts and macular degeneration of the eye retina, the most common cause of blindness in older Americans. New research is showing that many of the diseases that we associate with growing older are actually caused by free radical damage to our body cells.
Free radicals are rogue molecules that cause cancer by damaging the DNA in our cells.
They also cause heart disease by oxidizing cholesterol so that it forms a lesion that blocks a coronary artery. Free radicals are released when we eat a diet high in fat, meat and other flesh foods plus eggs and whole-milk dairy products. None of these animal foods contains a single phytochemical that helps to protect us from free radicals or disease. Nor do flesh foods have any dietary fiber, so necessary for a healthy digestive tract. This important discovery has led most health advisory agencies to urge Americans to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables each day.