Keep Your Health Tips

Impossible, you might say, especially if the vegetables you ate growing up were boiled into oblivion. Or maybe yours were embalmed as canned vegetables or cryogenically frozen. Treated with such disrespect, it’s easy to understand why many of us avoid vegetables, and lose out on the most life sustaining and disease preventing food available to us.

Vegetables (and fruits, too) are rich in special molecules called phytochemicals. Phyto simply means plant. Phytochemicals give plants their characteristic color, smell, taste and texture. They help the plant protect itself from disease and predators. We get the same benefit when we eat properly prepared vegetables and fruits. Food from animals, such as meat and milk, do not have this effect. The greatest benefit comes from a eating a variety of phytochemicals and is as simple as selecting vegetables and fruits of different colors. The array of colors will make your plate look more appetizing, too.

The easiest way to prepare vegetables is to eat them raw. One of my favorite simple meals is a bowl of soup with carrot sticks, celery sticks spread with pumpkin seed butter, sliced fruit and a piece of whole grain bread. Green salad is also easy. Visit your nearest organic farmers market and check out the bounty of baby greens available right now. Toss with some raw walnuts, fresh berries and balsamic vinaigrette.

Another way to prepare vegetables is to steam them. Add your vegetables to a saucepan, then add a small amount of water,

Share This