Overwhelmed by all of the "Follow Friday" recommendations on Twitter? Each week AOL Health's Twitter alias Healthpop and That's_Fit search the Twittersphere for the greatest diet and fitness Twitterers, and each week, we'll highlight the best-of their best tweets (no Twits here).

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Day 7: You know what? I've decided to quit counting calories when it comes to non-starchy vegetables. The calorie content is negligible at best. Take the following foods, for instance:

• 1 cup of broccoli -- 40 calories
• 1 cup of cauliflower -- 48 calories
• 3 stalks of celery -- nine calories ... I mean, come on. Is that worth writing down?
• 1 cup Swiss chard -- 32 calories
• cucumber -- 30 calories, for the whole thing!
• 1 cup eggplant -- 38 calories
  
  

You get the idea. These foods are jam-packed with nutrition and carry little weight when it comes to calories, so to make my life simpler, I've decided not to write them down. Will it make a difference in my weight loss? In the long run, I doubt it. This is about teaching myself life long healthy habits, not about obsessively tracking every last calorie.

Each week, I head to the farmer's market. It's always fun to see what new fruits and vegetables are at the market. Produce never tastes better than when it's fresh from the farm. Take advantage of summer's bounty and preserve some fresh produce.

You can can or freeze many fruits. I remember spending many summer days helping my mom freeze and can fruits and vegetables. My favorite was (and is) sliced and frozen peaches -- they're so delicious when they're just partially thawed. You can also try some of these recipes from Cooking Light and create yummy jams, chutneys, and relishes for use throughout the year. Some of their recipes include:

• Spicy Cucumber Relish
• Blueberry-Chipotle Chutney
• Raspberry-Almond Jam

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Want whiter and brighter teeth? Look no further than your food. Grab an apple, some carrots, a cucumber now and then and you'll scrub your stains away. It's the abrasive or crunchy quality of these foods that do the trick, says Elisa Mello, DDS, a cosmetic dentist in New York City. Items to avoid: Red wine, coffee, and cola, which may darken your pearly whites.

Another cleaning trick, says Mello for Woman's Day magazine (July 8, 2008), is to sip staining beverages through a straw and then chase with plenty of water to prevent them from leaving a mark.

For more tips on eating for healthy teeth, check out fatfreekitchen.com.

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I refuse to serve my kids skinless apples. There's just too much work involved. And there's too much my boys stand to lose if I peel apple after apple. Science backs me up on this one: Some of the most health-protecting antioxidants in fruit are found in the peel, says Susan Percival, Ph.D. and professor of nutrition at the University of Florida.

Before you get your peeler out, take a look at these five fruits with skin that should stay put.

• Apple -- Apple peels have 87 percent more cancer-fighting phytochemicals than the white flesh found inside.

• Cucumber -- Cucumber peels are made of silica, a collagen building block. Eat the skin of one cucumber and you'll get about five milligrams of this good stuff, the exact amount experts suggest eating. Buy organic and you'll avoid the waxy film found on some cucumber skin.
  

• Eggplant -- Eggplant skin contains nasunin, an antioxidant that may prevent brain damage. Potassium and fiber provided too.

• Kiwi -- Chemical compounds found in kiwi skin fight off bugs like staph and E. coli.

• Orange --Don't chomp right into this peel. Just add a little orange zest on salmon and salads and you'll be one step closer to preventing skin cancer.

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In our house, we tend to keep food in our fridge for longer than most people. It's part laziness, part iron stomachs and part frugality, but whatever the cause, I'm often left scratching my head wondering if I should use a certain ingredient in my next meal. But I recently came across this handy timeline for storing common fruits and veggies:

• Carrot (peeled): 51 days
  
• Tomato: 36 days
  
• Garlic: 30 days
• Broccoli: 27 days
• Strawberry: 22 days
  
• Asparagus: 22 days
• Spinach: 19 days
• Grapes (black and green): 14 days
• Peppers (red and green): 14 days
• Cucumber: 8 days
• Lettuce: 8 days

Surprising, yes? I thought the times on many of these were much shorter. This is good news though, particularly for those month-old carrots in the back of my fridge.

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I think a must-have for any shower is a loofah, which if you don't know is kind of like a rough sponge that you use to help exfoliate and scrub off any dead skin cells. And according to Mark's Daily Apple, you don't need to buy one of those expensive loofahs at the body shop -- you can easily make your own. Here's how:

• Grow a loofah (also called Luffa) in your backyard -- it's actually a vegetable that looks a lot like a cucumber
• Pick it once it's ripened
• Peel off the outer skin
• 'Milk' it, to get all the moisture and fleshy bits out of the middle. Save the seeds to plant them next season
  
• And that's it!

I had no idea that a loofah was a vegetable. Did you?

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I am usually of the philosophy that the grosser two flavors sound together (like banana and peanut butter sandwiches) the better they usually taste once you actually try them. But I'm not so sure about this one, called Pepsi Ice Cucumber. Yeah, that's right! Cucumber-flavored Pepsi! Eeeeew. I'm half curious, but I have to get past the idea that just thinking about anything both sweet and cucumber-flavored turns my stomach a little.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) we in the U.S. won't get to try it since it's being released for a limited time in Japan only. I suppose if it's a raging success over there we might get lucky, but I'm not holding my breath.

And no, I'm pretty sure drinking one of these would not count as a serving of vegetables!

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