This is one of the best changes you can make to improve your health.
We have all heard about eating your five-a-day but in countries where people remain healthy and active into old age they eat up to ten servings of fruit and vegetables. In these countries vegetables are not just used as an accompaniment to meals but are an integral part of each meal.
Rather than thinking about the savoury content of meals and adding vegetables as a side dish we need to think of ways to introduce vegetables into the food we prepare and also eat vegetables at more meals per day. In order to do this it is necessary to prepare more food from scratch as ready-meals and meals eaten out rarely contain sufficient.
If you can include things like homemade soup, a salad each day and numerous vegetables with your main meal it’s easy to find yourself consuming far more than five portions per day. If you make some meals vegetarian, use vegetable crudities or fruit as snacks then you are suddenly eating sufficient to improve your health and longevity.
Vegetables are full of nutrients essential for good health and some nutrients such as minerals are less easy to find in other foods. Vegetables are high in vitamins as well as minerals which are needed as fuel for our cells. They contain large amounts of antioxidants essential for good health and for protecting us from major diseases as well as aging.
Most experts agree that for optimum health our diet should be more alkaline than acidic and vegetables and fruit are our most alkalising foods. Alkalising the body helps to keep the blood healthy and also keeps the lymphatic system, which removes waste products, more fluid maintaining a constant natural detox.
Another good reason to eat more vegetables is that they are low in calories but because of their high fibre content they fill you up – it’s very difficult to gain weight even if you over-eat them. The fibre found only in plant foods such as vegetables helps to keep the digestive system running smoothly by bulking up the stools and binding with toxins to escort them out of the body. Without sufficient fibre bowel movements and consequently elimination of toxins is dramatically compromised.
Vegetables encourage the growth of good intestinal flora, essential for good digestive health, as these flora feed on the vegetable fibre. Vegetables are also a source of good gut flora as these are present on their leaves, especially organically grown vegetables that haven’t been over washed or over cooked.
It’s important to eat as broad a range of vegetables as possible to obtain a wide spectrum of nutrients. The latest research talks about eating 30 different plant foods a week but that does include things like nuts and seed, beans and pulses. It’s tempting if we are not careful to choose easy-to-prepare and sweet tasting vegetables such as peas, green beans and tenderstem broccoli, but it is essential that we also eat the more bitter tasting ones such as kale, sprouts, cauliflower and swede.
Eating the whole range of vegetables enables us to obtain bitter, astringent and pungent flavours whereas our society is largely addicted to sweet, sour and salty, often keeping us out of balance.
Eating a wide range of colours in your vegetables means that you obtain the greatest range of nutrients possible which is important as these are known to work together in the body. The deeper the vegetable colour (think kale, spinach, aubergine, tomatoes and red pepper) the better, but all vegetables have important attributes.
