Produce for Better Health Foundation (PBH) has added new pages and features to its Fruits & Veggies-More Matters consumer web site, www.FruitsandVeggiesMoreMatters.org. In addition to the new Fruit & Vegetable Daily News page, the Fruits & Veggies-More Matters Let’s Move page, and the Fruits & Veggies-More Matters Vegetable Garden How-To Guide, the redesigned home page now offers easier navigation to new and popular areas of the site, and its databases now feature new commodities and recipes. Further, PBH has reformatted its biweekly, consumer e-newsletter, which is now known as the Fruit & Veggie Voice. According to the Hockessin, Del.-based foundation, even more new features are in the offing.

The new Fruit & Vegetable Daily News page provides a running list of the latest news stories on fruit and vegetable research, policy and health news. All users have to do to read a featured article is hover over the headline to stop the scrolling, or click the headline.

In support of First Lady Michelle Obama’s work to end childhood obesity in this generation, the Fruits & Veggies-More Matters Let’s Move page discusses the three Ps necessary for Mrs. Obama’s much publicized initiative to be successful: the plan, the process, and the parents.

The Vegetable Garden How-To Guide, meanwhile, lays out the steps involved in planning, preparing and planting a vegetable garden and features a list of frequently asked gardening questions. Consumers can sign up to receive gardening reminder e-mails with information on what they should be doing for their plants and when.

The home page now also features a translate link that takes the user to Google Translate, where she can then enter the URL of the page she wants translated, select a language, and hit “translate” to read it in her preferred language.

Among the 24 recipes recently added to the site are Honeydew Summer Salad Wedges and Citrus Vegetables, while the 17 new commodities include fava beans, mustard greens and Ugli fruit. Other new commodities, as well as recipes supplied by donors Sunkist and U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council are coming soon

Along with its new look and name, PBH’s e-newsletter has a new leading teaser in keeping with the organization’s mission, Get the Scoop. Stay Smart about Your Family's Health.

According to PBH, it’s working on even more ways for donors and licensees to get involved and for consumers to interact and get educated through the site, which first launched in 2007.

“We’re continually developing new additions to the consumer Web site,” affirmed PBH president and CEO Elizabeth Pivonka. “We want to make sure that the Web site is an effective resource for consumers, not only by providing them with how-to tips and nutritional information, but also by weighing in on fruit- and vegetable-related topics currently making the news. We want to be the place they go to get accurate information and advice on nutrition issues that concern them.”

In 2009, the Fruits & Veggies-More Matters Web site received a monthly average of 61,318 visitors, a 23 percent higher average for monthly visits than in 2008. So far this year, about 58,597 consumers are visiting the site per month.