ABSTRACT
In recent years, an increasing interest has been placed on a new diet-health paradigm with an emphasis on the positive aspects of diet and an examination of foods for their protective and disease-preventive potential. Accordingly, fruits and vegetables have gained an important status in the human diet as “functional foods,” which are capable of providing additional physiological benets, including preventing or delaying the onset of several chronic diseases, due to their phytochemical content [1,2]. The 5 A Day program was developed in 1989, with a report by National Academy of Sciences, recommending the daily consumption of ve or more servings of fruits and vegetables in order to reduce the risk of certain chronic diseases [3].
