More Fruits and Vegetables in Kids Diets Means Lower Risk of Early Heart Disease, Say Experts
December 2, 2010 Kyriaki (Sandy) Venetis 
Photo courtesy of The Tehran Times Daily Newspaper.
We all know that adding more fruits and vegetables to our family’s diet is important, but it’s good to remember why. Besides improving our own health, we also teach our kids healthy eating habits that will benefit them for a lifetime.
Between lives that run at a frenzied pace and media marketing of high fat meals, in recent decades healthy eating has dropped dangerously low on people’s priority lists. And, there’s a price for this.
Around the world, and especially in America, people are getting heavier and heavier, developing more and more health problems, and teaching their children the same bad eating habits – consequences are children developing early risk factors for heart disease by the time they reach puberty.
Heart disease is when enough blood can’t circulate to the heart muscle, which slowly damages its ability to function.
The American Heart Association just published a study which said that children as early as nine years old were showing precursors to heart disease, including obesity, elevated blood pressure, and high Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, which is the bad kind. Teen smoking was also considered a risk factor.