Eat Your Fruits and Veggies!!

*First of all, shout out to my 2 new Followers!  I'm loving having 7 followers, yippee!

As most of you know, my husband is in school getting his PhD in Microbiology/Molecular Genetics.  Yes, it's as complicated as it sounds ;)

He does a lot of research, reading, experiments that are related/have implications for cancer research, and right now I'm even being very careful how I word things because he's very particular in how he describes his research, etc.  Anyway, based on new reports (if you'd like references, I'll ask Matt to provide) that in their lifetime 50% of the American population will likely be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetime.  More specifically, the odds from birth to death for men is 1 in 2 and 1 in 3 for females.

Here are some proven things to up your chances:
-Smoking.  This one is the biggie.  This increases your risk by 50%
-Obesity: 30%
-Aging.  Can't avoid this one, but your risks significantly increase over the age of 55

Needless to say, I hear about this stuff A LOT and the importance of diet and exercise and taking vitamins.  He really gets going when he asks when I last took a multivitamin and the answer is not today!!  Ooops.

He is also on me about a regular dose of fruit and vegetables.  5 servings of each.  I maybe get 5 servings of fruit in a week, not in a day...and vegetables, I like them fried, haha.  We have gotten back in to steaming broccoli, carrots occasionally, but we definitely eat our share of sweet potato fries.  They're just sooo good.

One of my favorite blogs I follow is Pioneer Woman.  I was talking about her blog a week or so ago at my book club HH, and another girl and I gushed for about 5 minutes about how much we love her and think we'd be best friends with her if we ever met.  Haha.  Getting to the point, she posted a "recipe" for fruit smoothies in the past week, and I was sold.  I made a modified version this morning and it was AH-mazing. 

Here's the link for her smoothies.  She recommended adding veggies to hers as an option.  I wasn't so brave this morning, but I may venture out as I continue to make these.

Here's What I Put In Mine (WISH I had taken a picture...next time)
-About 1/3 of the bag of HEB frozen berries (medley of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, YUM)
-Three heaping scoops of Light and Fit vanilla flavored yogurt (rougly 2/3 cup)
-Dash of OJ
-Sprinkled about 1/2 of a package of Carnation Instant Breakfast (vanilla flavored)
-!/2 of a banana
-A few ice cubes (The fruit was frozen so it didn't need much ice)

The Result: DUH-licious.  I got my serving of fruit for the day, the Carnantion instant breakfast adds essential vitamins and mineraks, and it was all soo good.  Maybe I'll add a little extra OJ or water next time, it was real thick so I ate it with a spoon until it melted some.  There was a hint of vanilla flavor in there which was nice.