Nutritious Green Vegetables
August 17th, 2011
While striving to eat the recommended 5 servings of vegetables and fruits each day, it’s important to try and focus on eating a variety of dark green vegetables.
Dark green leafy vegetables are a great source of many nutritious vitamins and minerals needed to stay healthy including phytonutrients, vitamins A, C, and K, calcium, iron and folate. These are also good sources of fiber. Recent research suggests that the nutrients found in dark green vegetables may be helpful in preventing certain types of cancers while promoting heart and cardiovascular health. Dark green leafy vegetables are one of the most concentrated sources of nutrition of any type of food.
Popular varities include spinach, broccoli, collard greens, arugula, kale, mustard greens, and swiss chard.
Green vegetables are also a good source of iron and calcium for any healthy diet. Green leafy vegetables are known to be rich in beta-carotene, which can be converted into vitamin A, and also improve immune function. Chlorophyll is what gives green leafy vegetables their color, meaning that dark leafy greens are extremely rich in chlorophyll. Leafy greens are known for their help in the prevention of diseases, including heart disease, stroke and a variety of cancers. As a rule of thumb, the darker the leaves the more nutrient-rich the vegetable is.
Eating green vegetables can significantly decrease the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, according to a study conducted by researchers from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and recently published in the journal Diabetes Care. The study by led by Lydia A. Bazzano showed the every additional serving of green leafy vegetables a day was associated with a 9 percent reduction in diabetes risk. The study also found three servings a day of whole fruit consumption was also associated with an 18 percent reduction.
Also, eating healthy green vegetables can help prevent you from developing brain disorders like Alzheimer’s Disease. As part of an overall balanced lifestyle plan, you just can’t go wrong by eating green vegetables as often as possible.