To lead a healthy, long life, you have to combine an active lifestyle with eating right, which seems difficult in the modern times we live in.
However, with the right trick up your sleeve, you can do so without wasting too much of your personal time. The trick we are referring to is to grow your own foods – you get to breathe in fresh air while tending to the veggies and fruits you grow, you do physical activity that keeps your energy levels up and your body toned, and you get to eat 100% healthy.
How growing your foods benefits you
Some of the benefits that accompany taking up this activity are more obvious, while others are not commonly known, or they’re not where your mind jumps to first. It might be a new skill that you have to acquire, but with a little research regarding the type of veggies and fruits you can grow in your garden soil, you will enjoy a new quality in taste when preparing your meals.
Guaranteed freshness that helps improve health
One of the main concerns with buying foods like fruits and veggies is that their freshness isn’t guaranteed, and you never know what type of fertilizers and substances have been applied during their growth, chemicals that could obviously have a negative impact on your health. As you grow the foods yourself, you can opt for all-natural fertilization methods to ensure quality foods that retain their properties and help improve your health instead of degrading it.
Better-tasting meals
As your food is fresh and safe to consume, your meals will taste better as well as they won’t be prepared with chemically enhanced veggies. Thus, you will get to enjoy the natural flavor of the meals, an infusion of tastes exploding in your mouth. To make the meals you serves even tastier and healthier, prepare the veggies with the electric skillet or other kitchen gear that convey a healthy cooking method.
Pleasant outdoor exercise
As you take up gardening and perform tasks like planting, watering, harvesting, and weeding, you also enjoy a hearty and purposeful physical activity. For those who have large gardens, this can imply up to 1-2 hours per day of light exercises that are joint and muscle friendly. You might have to do heavy lifting sometimes, and when this is required of you, be sure to lift them properly and keep a good posture of your back to prevent back damage. What’s best for you to do is to stretch your tight muscles a bit before you begin lifting.
Vitamin D infusion
One important nutrient you will fill your body with before you actually harvest your produce is vitamin D, a vitamin that is most efficiently assimilated by sitting in the sun. Just 30 minutes of backyard gardening per day suffice to keep your vitamin D levels up, the results of the nutrient’s presence being better sleep and a boost in positive energy.
Money-saving solution
As you stock your pantry with fresh produce that you have grown yourself, you will spend a lot less money when you go grocery shopping as well. Seeing how gardening isn’t a pretentious activity investment-wise, you actually end up saving a lot of money in the long run. You can even preserve certain foods by drying or canning them so that you can consume them amid winter time when there is no harvest.
List of foods you should grow in your garden
- Cucumbers: Low in calories and high in nutrients, cucumbers are easy to grow vegetables that are made up of approximately 96% water. Other advantages are that it is high in antioxidants, it aids in the weight loss process, it lowers blood sugar, and it helps with hydration.
- Tomatoes: They contain key carotenoids like lycopene and lutein, helping prevent eye problems induced by light. Due to their nutritional value, they also help fight cancer, reduce blood glucose, and maintain a healthy blood pressure
- Eggplants: As eggplants contain a variety of vitamins and minerals, they help improve your overall health. Yet this isn’t the most impressive benefit provided by the vegetable, but rather the rich in antioxidants profile that helps in cancer and heart disease prevention.
- Carrots: These vegetables are rich in fiber, minerals, and vitamins, some of their most prevalent properties being that they help reduce free radicals in the body to keep health issues like cancer at bay.
- Potatoes: When prepared healthily, potatoes can help improve your diet and your health. They are rich in compounds like phenolic acids, flavonoids, and carotenoids, compounds that act as antioxidants, neutralizing free radicals..
- Avocado: Rich in vitamins and nutrients, a 100-gram serving of avocado provides your body with vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, potassium, vitamin E, vitamin B5, and vitamin B6. As they don’t contain cholesterol or sodium, they are low in saturated fat, being one of the most popular foods recommended by nutritionists.
- Blueberries: Highly regarded for their nutritional value and considered a “superfood” that is low in calories and beneficial to our health, it is a fruit you must grow and consume as much as possible. A single serving provides you with vitamin C, manganese, vitamin K, and fiber.
