This contemporary of Christopher Columbus went around the Cape of Good Hope (which Wikipedia just told me is not the southern tip of Africa, but pretty darn close) in 1498. His explorations are huge enough that we still talk about him today. He left in a wrong season and therefore the return trip took over 130 days. That's over four months. He lost half his crew to death, and most of the rest developed scurvy, which Wikipedia describes as, "formation of spots on the skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from all mucous membranes from the lack of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) in the diet." Ew!
I'm not about to go into how the American diet lacks appropriate servings of fruits and vegetables, because that's been done to death and the whole point of this site is not to do the typical nutrition stuff. You need fruit. You need veggies. Blah, blah, blah.
How about this: why don't you make it a goal to eat a serving (or an additional serving than your normal one) of fruit in the next 24 hours? If you need to, make it canned fruit. (It's worth doing it--see earlier blog.) When you do, think about the fact that da Gama could explore southern Africa and build a trade route to India, but he couldn't keep men alive for lack of fruit. So in a way, you're smarter than a man we deem worthy enough to talk about over 500 years later. How's that for important?