Good quality vegetables are essential to life and they should form the biggest part of the diet. Eating and ingesting a wide variety of vegetable nutrients gives you a strong gastrointestinal and immune system, a powerful heart, improved eyesight, a protected brain, increased fat-loss and weight-management and a far lower risk of almost every disease known. There are thousands of vegetable nutrients that build and add to these benefits and protection.

The health benefits of eating a plant-based wholefoods diet

• Helps slow various aspects of the ageing process
• Improves the cardiovascular system
• Scavenges the free radicals that cause devastating internal damage
• Improves our natural detoxification processes
• Reverses and removes the lipid peroxidation of rancid fat
• Prevents the oxidation of LDL cholesterol building up in the arteries
• Reduces the incidence of age-related macular degeneration
• Counteracts inflammation of body tissues
• Protects the skin from sun damage
• Protects your genetic code from corruption
• Contributes to a far lower overall risk of disease including cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity and cognitive decline

Some tips to help your transition to a plant-based diet

1. Eat 40% vegetables and the rest mainly plant-based food 
2. Eat 5 servings of raw fruit and 10 servings of vegetables daily 
3. Plan meals where vegetables are the main event, not the side dish
4. Have a main salad (not a side salad), then add your protein
5. When making steamed vegetables, have them cover the bottom of the plate and drizzle a tasty sauce on top of them. Then add the extras
6. Eating your salad with good quality salad dressing or avocado means you absorb the fat-soluble carotenoids more effectively 
7. Make a 100% vegetable soup and then add a little protein in at the end if required
8. Raw cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots or cucumbers are all great snacks. Eaten raw, they are packed with living nutrition and the chewing slows down the possibility of overeating, as you get full earlier 
9. Dip your celery stalks into tahini to get a massive hit of calcium, potassium and many other bone-building nutrients

Vegetables are the single most important life-extending foods. Eat more, eat them now and learn to love them!

Written by Jason Shon Bennett from jasonshonbennett.com