Whereas fruits are typically packed with vitamins, minerals tend to come moreso from our vegetables – though make no mistake, both fruits AND vegetables are packed with both.
So, a good question to start with might be: what is the difference between a vitamin and a mineral?
Whereas vitamins are organic and thereby are typically quite volatile (they can be broken down by the likes of heat, air, and acid), minerals are conversely inorganic. In fact, a mineral can actually be a metal or a rock – something you would never really think of as being a fundamental building block in what makes you.
But indeed minerals are crucial to the healthy function of the human body. Iron for example is a crucial mineral that the body uses to make hemoglobin – the red blood cells that travel around the body carrying oxygen.
Without this process, it would be impossible to provide energy around the body for the countless crucial functions that go on – including breathing, digesting, and more.
Typically, minerals tend to have a slightly more fundamental role in the structural elements of the human body – and the harder elements. For example, minerals form bones, tendons, and ligaments.
Minerals also play a role in conduction, however. The body is powered by electricity after all, and maintaining the correct charge is crucial for the healthy function of our muscles and brain.
That’s why an incorrect balance of sodium and potassium can cause cramping, as the body is unable to send messages correctly to the muscles. Likewise, a lack of calcium can reduce strength as it is needed to handle the charge in the muscle cells.
Did you know? You can tell the difference between a fruit and vegetable based on the seed/stone. Vegetables don’t have them! Foods that have surprising categorizations include: tomatoes (fruit), coconut (fruit), avocado (fruit), and cucumber (fruit).
Other Essential Micronutrients
As well as being rich in vitamins and minerals, fruits and vegetables are also a rich source of the two other essential nutrients. The other essential nutrients are: essential fatty acids, and essential amino acids.
The term “essential” means that these substances cannot be synthesized within the body, and so therefore must be obtained from our diet. And perhaps this should also be a clue as to how big a problem it is that 99% of us are not getting them that way!
So, what do these nutrients do?
Well, amino acids are essentially the building blocks of proteins. We get a lot of these from meat, and our bodies will then break down those constituent parts in order to rebuild our tissue. As we saw at the start of this book, we literally are what we eat!
This is why amino acids and proteins by extension are so important for bodybuilders and athletes trying to build muscle.
Research suggests that the optimum balance for athletes is 1 gram of protein for every 1lb of bodyweight. Protein also has other benefits – it is much harder to convert into fat for instance, and it has a thermogenic effect meaning that simply digesting it will actually burn calories!
Thus, many people will be hard at work trying to find sources of protein from meat and will eat large amounts of chicken to build bigger muscles. This can become hard work! But what they forget is that vegetables and even fruits also contain protein (though vegetables are slightly superior in this sense).
Don’t just count the protein you got from that protein shake and chicken, think about how much is in the broccoli on the side of the chicken.
Amino acids also play a host of other roles in the body and are used to produce digestive enzymes, neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) and much more. They can also do things such as creating.
Finally, fruits and vegetables contain essential fatty acids. These are important fats that help us to better absorb other fruits and vegetables, and also serve a range of additional useful benefits – such as enhancing brain function (the brain is made of a large amount of fat!).
Omega 3 is one of the most powerful essential fatty acids there is and has a HUGE host of amazing benefits. Often, we think of omega 3 as being something we get from fish, but in fact it also exists in good amounts in seaweed, hemp seed, walnuts, kidney beans, soybean and more.
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