The VIDA project empowers rural families to take control of their own nutritional futures by giving them the chance to experience a healthy diet.
Even adding a single serving of fruits and vegetables can make a big difference to even the most impoverished diets.¹ With adequate supplies of vitamins and minerals, the body’s own satiation mechanisms trigger sooner, reducing the need to overeat.
The Food-Energy Imbalance
Growing waistlines around the world is evidence that people are consuming more calories than they need. Cheap oils and simple carbohydrates provide “empty calories,” which either fail to trigger the satiation response that makes the body feel full, or else lacks essential micronutrients that the body needs to fight off disease. While more exercise for sedentary adults is certainly in order, the average adult must walk an additional 25–30 minutes per day to offset a paltry 100 calories (that is less than one tablespoon of cheap vegetable oil).² Clearly, it is just as important to address the dietary side of the equation!
There is a hidden cost to empty calories: in prenatal environments, diet triggers lifelong changes in the physiology and hormone levels of infants.³ Children born to malnourished women have adaptations that make them significantly more susceptible to obesity and type 2 diabetes.
