According to a recent study, Canadians are wasting billions by not eating enough fruits and vegetables. This is because many chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer are partially attributable to diet and lifestyle.
In a new study in Public Health Nutrition, Canadian researchers, led by John Ekwaru and Paul Veugelers, looked at chronic diseases in which fruits and veggie intake significantly reduces disease burden across many studies.
After assembling the established estimates of the risk of inadequate vegetables and fruit on these chronic diseases, they found that the 80 percent of women and 89 percent of men in Canada eat inadequate amounts of veggies and fruit.
Their most conservative estimate of the price of not eating your fruits and veggies in Canada is 3.3 billion $CAN yearly, a third of which is in direct health-care costs and two-thirds is indirect costs due to people being too sick to go to work.
source: huffingtonpost.com
