You don’t have to be a nutritionist to understand that including fruit and vegetables in your diet is imperative to leading a healthy lifestyle. Our parents were right when they told us to clean up our veggies on our plate, but did they really know why?.  It’s not just the vitamins and minerals that we’re after, the lesser known Phytochemicals play a huge role in our health as well.

All plants contain phytochemicals which not only make them smell, taste and look nice they also protect the plant from disease. When we ingest the plants the phytochemicals generate powerful antioxidants in our bodies enhancing our immune systems and may also reduce risks of cancer. Phytochemicals are classified based on color of the fruit or vegetable and each one has it’s own unique properties so make sure your choosing a wide variety of colorful foods in your diet.

Phytochemical levels in plants change throughout their lifecycle and during processing and shipping. When a fruit is mature or ripe it is at it’s most nutritious, if the fruit is picked early it will not have reached it’s peak. Processing or cooking will decrease levels of phytonutrients as well so keep that in mind when buying some pre-cooked canned food.

When buying produce note that many foods on your grocery store shelves were picked green so that as they reach their destination they reach full ripeness. A tomato is a good example of picking green, a process that robs the food of its full nutritious potential. In some cases eating frozen fruit or veggies can glean extra nutritious value because they were picked ripe and frozen right away. For these reasons, it’s important to eat as locally as possible when food is in season or even grow some of your own food.

It’s not possible to keep track of how much of each phytonutrient your consuming so just make sure you vary your diet and fill your dinner plate with as many different colors as possible. Also, cut down on the processing, in other words the closer to raw and ripe your food is, the more beneficial it will be. Salads filled with raw veggies and ripe fruit is a perfect example.

Here is list of high phytonutrient concentrated foods from Wikipedia:

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