Vegetables, those lovely crisp green, yellow, red, orange and white things. Vegetables are those crunchy fibrous treats that our bodies need. Vegetables are sources of vitamins and minerals that provide the basics for survival for our body and minds. Yes, vegetables are important and tasty parts of our everyday diets.
The problem with most vegetables is that we either overcook them or undercook them. Being humans, we need cooked foods. Our teeth and stomachs are just not built to eat raw foods; we need cooked foods that our guts can extract all the nutrients in our foods, especially vegetables. By cooking foods we are breaking into a vault and getting the nutrient treasures. But overcooked foods lose their taste, texture and nutritional value – all those nutrient treasures just break down with overcooking; so when we break through into the vault there is nothing there worth eating (like Geraldo Rivera breaking into Al Capone’s vault, nothing is there but a lot of effort, time and energy was expended to get in).
How much nutrition is there in vegetables? Let’s look at a chart. Take a look for one of my favorite vegetables – broccoli. A typical serving is about ½ cup and it has only 27 calories. But look at the nutrients you get from just ½ cup of broccoli! Protein, potassium, iron, folic acid, vitamins B1, B2, B6, just to name a few; the list has 19 necessary nutrients. Without these nutrients you will not live well. There are lots of nutrients in vegetables.
Just as always, mix up what you eat every day. Today, eat some broccoli, tomorrows some wax beans, then the next day corn; mix it up enjoy your food’s taste, texture, color and nutrients. So eat your vegetables. They taste good and are good for you!