Are Fruits and Vegetables sufficient for Nutritional Needs?

Good nutrition is one of the keys to a healthy life. A person can improve his or her health by keeping a balanced diet. And for that, they must eat lots of fruits, vegetables, milk, and whole grains.

But now the question arises is that if everyone on the earth wanted to eat a healthy diet then there wouldn't be adequate fruit and vegetables to go around, as said by a new University of Guelph study. Researchers concluded that the global agriculture system currently overproduces grains, fats, and sugars, while production of fruits and vegetables and, to a smaller degree, protein is not sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the current population.

The researchers also found that shifting production to match nutritional dietary guidelines would require 50 million fewer hectares of arable land, because fruits and vegetables take less land to grow than grain, sugar, and fat.

The researchers also compared global agricultural production with nutritionists' consumption recommendations and found a drastic mismatch.  "We simply can't all adopt a healthy diet under the current global agriculture system," said study co-author Prof. Evan Fraser, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and director of U of G's Arrell Food Institute. "Results show that the global system currently overproduces grains, fats and sugars, while production of fruits and vegetables and, to a smaller degree, protein is not sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the current population."