ALL ABOUT VEGETABLES
by Dr.
Lawrence Wilson
©
November 2016, L.D. Wilson Consultants, Inc.
All
information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for the diagnosis, treatment,
prescription or cure of any disease or health condition.
Table Of
Contents
Roots
Cruciferous
Vegetables
Greens
Fiber
Minerals
Organically
Grown
Fresh,
Frozen Or Canned?
Cooking And
Preparing Vegetables
Fermented
Vegetables
How Much?
Toppings For
Vegetables
Children And
Vegetables
Juicing
Vegetable
Snacks
Harmful
Vegetables
Vegetables Versus Fruits
Herbs Versus
Vegetables
______________________
Definition. Vegetables
are roots, stems, leaves and flowers of plants.
Ones
that are really not vegetables.
Some foods that are called vegetables are really fruits. You can identify them easily because
they contain seeds. In general, I
do not recommend these ÒvegetablesÓ because they are more yin in macrobiotic
terms.
They include
tomatoes, peppers (both sweet and hot
peppers), eggplant, okra, and cucumber. Squashes and pumpkin are also technically
fruits. However, pumpkin and
winter squashes (butternut, spaghetti, and acorn squash are not too yin, so a
portion up to twice a week is okay.
I suggest avoiding summer squashes such as zucchini, sunburst squash and
others.
Plentiful. Hundreds of edible vegetables
exist. Most people deprive
themselves of the delicious tastes, colors and textures of most of them by just
eating a few.
The
best source of alkaline reserve minerals of any food group. Vegetables are exceedingly nutritious,
particularly in minerals, anti-oxidants, and hundreds of other nutrients. These cannot be obtained from any other
foods.
Most all
bodies are mineral-starved today thanks to modern N-P-K agriculture, food
refining, stress and poor quality diets.
For these reasons, everyone needs to eat plenty of cooked vegetables.
Cooking is
needed because human beings cannot digest tough vegetable fibers, within which
are most of the minerals in vegetables.
Anyone who just mainly on salads
slowly demineralizes the body. The effects are worse for women, who
are prone to osteoporosis later in life.
Osteoporosis is a type of demineralization.
I
find that anyone who does not eat cooked vegetables will not be healthy. I pass along this observation of
thousands of clients over the past 36 years.
Excellent
for weight loss. Eating a lot
of cooked vegetables can help anyone lose lots of weight without feeling
hungry. In contrast, fruit will
keep weight on.
II. SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
DO:
Vegetables
are best eaten:
- Fresh
-
Organically grown
-
Cooked until soft, not raw.
Pressure-cooking is the best method for quality, cooking speed and ease
of cleanup.
-
Locally
grown, but only if they are of excellent quality.
Eat cooked
vegetables at least three times daily.
It is nice to cook them fresh for each meal, but it is fine to cook a
lot of them once or twice daily and eat them all day.
Roots. The best are all onions, leeks,
carrots, turnips, rutabaga, daikon, scallions and
shallots. A small amount of the
others is okay, such as rutabaga, golden beets, yams, sweet potatoes, parsnips,
and others. I suggest avoiding red
beets, which are slightly toxic.
The
cabbage family or cruciferous vegetables. The best are red cabbage, cauliflower (including the leaves
and stems around the outside), and Brussels sprouts. Broccoli is okay, but at this time baby brocolli,
brocolini, or brocolette
seem to be a little better.
(Rutabaga and daikon are also cruciferous, but
I listed them under roots).
Greens. These appear to be less important
than the roots or cruciferous vegetables, so eat less of them. The best include green beans, spinach, bok choy, Swiss chard, Chinese
cabbage, parsley, watercress, cilantro, mustard greens, collard greens, carrot
tops, and a few others. Some kale
is reported to contain high levels of thallium, a toxic metal, so I would avoid
it for now.
Other
good vegetables. These include
peas, sweet corn, okra, cooked mung bean sprouts,
water chestnuts and nopal cactus or prickly pear
leaves.
How
much?
Have at least TWO large portions daily of roots and TWO large portions of
cruciferous vegetables. Have only
ONE portion of greens daily.
The reason
is that greens are much more yin.
Many people overdo on greens.
To understand yin and yang, read Yang And Yin Of
Food.
DO NOT:
Do not eat
raw vegetables. I know this goes
against popular opinion. The
reasons are explained below.
Do not eat
the nightshade family vegetables.
These include tomatoes, white and red potatoes, eggplant and all
peppers. The only exception is that a little ground cayenne pepper is fine as a
spice.
Do not eat
much asparagus, artichoke, lettuce, cucumbers, celery, algae, spirulina, summer squashes (zucchini, sunburst and others),
or most mushrooms, including kombucha tea. These are all more yin or somewhat
toxic or irritating to the intestinal tract.
Do not eat
canned or frozen vegetables if you can get fresh ones, although canned or
frozen are better than nothing.
ROOT
VEGETABLES
Root
vegetables deserve special mention and are often ignored. They have been staple foods in most
civilizations for thousands of years.
Roots are among the most concentrated sources of vitamins and minerals
available to us.
Carrots,
leeks, onions (white, yellow, green and red), shallots, scallions, daikon (white radish) and turnips are the best.
Yang. Roots are more yang in macrobiotic
terms because they grow underground.
This quality is very beneficial for everyone today. Roots also store very well, which helps
if you do not enjoy shopping every few days.
Starchy. Most roots
are starchy vegetables, which means they will fill you up quite well if you eat
enough of them. Yet they are far
easier to digest than other starches such as grains, breads or dried beans.
Cooking
roots. Cut roots into chunks for faster
cooking. Most require
pressure-cooking for 5 minutes, or steaming for 30-40 minutes to break down
their tough fibers and turn their starches into sugars.
You can also
cook roots overnight in a crock pot on a low temperature setting. This is not quite as good as
pressure-cooking, but you wonÕt have to cut them up.
CRUCIFEROUS
VEGETABLES
These
include cauliflower, cabbage (red and
green), Brussels sprouts, kale, bok choy, turnip root and greens, rutabaga, broccoli, arugula,
radishes (many types), watercress and wasabi.
Much
research lately has focused on the health benefits of cruciferous vegetables. All are rich sources of sulfur of a
particular kind, along with hundreds of other nutrients and phytochemicals.
These amazing foods contain substances that can help prevent cancer and many
other life-threatening conditions.
GREENS
These
are excellent vegetables, but they are quite a bit more yin, so I donÕt
recommend eating as many. One
serving per day is enough. Some
people only eat greens, thinking these are the best vegetables. Please do not do this.
Kale
can absorb too much thallium, making this vegetable possibly toxic, depending
upon where it is grown. I would
avoid most kale at this time.
SALADS
Do not eat much
salad. You donÕt need to eat any,
but a little as a garnish is okay.
The problems with salads are:
1. Raw
vegetables are much more yin than cooked ones. Eating more yin food is generally quite harmful for health.
2. Our
bodies cannot absorb many minerals from raw vegetables because we cannot break
down their tough vegetable fibers, which contain most of the minerals in a
vegetable. Cooking breaks down the
fiber, and is a major reason for cooking vegetables.
3. For the
reason above, salad is not a particularly nutritious food, other than its high
content of fiber.
4. Salads
have so much roughage they fill up the stomach and cause a person to eat less
of the essential foods - cooked vegetables, blue corn, and some animal protein.
5. In
restaurants, in particular, I would completely avoid salads because they are
often unclean and can harbor bacteria, viruses and parasites.
VEGETABLE
JUICES
A
method some people use to increase the amount of vegetables they eat is to put
the vegetables through a juicer.
This will extract the minerals and leave most of the fiber behind in the
machine.
The
problem with juicing is that juice is extremely yin. This is so because the vegetables are eaten raw, and
breaking up the vegetables in the juicer makes them even more yin.
For
this reason, I only recommend 10-12 ounces of carrot juice daily or as an
alternative have 1-2 ounces of wheat grass juice, but only up to twice a week.
VEGETABLE
SOUPS
Many
people enjoy vegetables in soups.
These are easy to prepare and nutritious. However, soups tend to add too much water to oneÕs food,
which dilutes the digestive juices and interferes with digestion.
For
this reason, please avoid most soups.
If you want to have soup, it needs to be very thick. That is, it should be mainly cooked
vegetables and very little water.
FIBER
Fiber is an
important component of vegetables.
Most of it is cellulose, an insoluble fiber that we cannot digest.
Fiber helps
keep food moving through the intestines and helps prevent constipation, diverticulosis, diverticulitis and even cancer. Fiber also assists in the
production of vitamins in the intestines and can support the proliferation of
friendly bacteria.
If one does
not eat many vegetables, the diet may lack fiber. This is especially true if one eats mainly refined grains
such as white flour, white bread, white pasta and white rice, all of which have
had their fiber removed.
MINERALS
FROM VEGETABLES
Vegetables
are an essential source of dozens of minerals. Organically grown vegetables generally contain quite a lot
more minerals than commercially grown vegetables. The mineral content also depends upon where and exactly how
the food was grown.
Cooking vegetables greatly enhances the
availability of the minerals in most vegetables by breaking down the tough
vegetable fibers and often by concentrating the food so that more can be eaten
easily. Cooking does not destroy minerals at
all, although it reduces the level of vitamins C and E, to some degree.
Here are
more details about a few of the main minerals found in vegetables.
Iron. Dark green leafy greens and beets are
very high in iron. However, the
iron they contain is not as biologically available as that found in meats and
eggs.
Magnesium
and chlorophyl. Leafy vegetables are rich in chlorophyll, a magnesium-containing substance that plants use to
generate energy from sunlight.
In fact, all
vegetables are good sources of magnesium, a mineral everyone needs in abundance
and one that is deficient in most peopleÕs diets today.
Sulfur. The radish, onion and cabbage
families are excellent sources of natural sulfur compounds. Sulfur compounds are essential for
detoxification in the liver, for the brain, for the skin and the health of all connective
tissue (disulfide bonds).
Iodine. This is
found in some vegetables, particularly sea vegetables such as kelp. Everyone on a nutritional balancing
takes kelp capsules, an easy way to consume this superb vegetable. Most people are very deficient in iodine
today. Other sea vegetables such
as nori, wakame, hiiki, dulse and others also
contain plenty of iodine, but have less alginates to soak up the mercury that
these vegetables also contain. For
this reason, I only recommend kelp.
For more details, read Kelp on this website.
ORGANICALLY
GROWN ARE USUALLY BEST
Organically
grown food has the following important advantages:
1. It usually
contain much less residue of toxic pesticides and insecticides. It may still contain some pesticide
residue because some blows from one farm to the next, and some remains in the
soil for years if the farmer raised food conventionally in the past.
2. It is
more nutritious than regular produce.
A study published in the Journal
of Applied Nutrition tested organic and commercial produce purchased randomly
in Chicago stores. Compared to the
commercially-grown produce, the organic vegetables had an average of twice the
levels of minerals. Other studies
have shown the same thing.
3. Buying
organic food sends a message to farmers that you prefer we not poison the earth
with toxic sprays.
4. Organic
vegetables often taste much better, especially carrots, onions and a few other
vegetables. Eating organic may
turn a non-vegetable eater into a vegetable lover simply because organically
grown tastes better.
5.
Organically grown food often stays fresh longer.
The variety
of organic vegetables available in markets is growing fast. Indeed, this is the fastest growing
sector of the agricultural marketplace.
They cost a little more, but prices are coming down and they are worth
having if you can find them and afford them.
FRESH,
FROZEN OR CANNED?
The best way
to enjoy vegetables is to eat them fresh. They will have the most nutrition in
this form and will often taste best.
However, some frozen vegetables are okay.
Canned
vegetables are much better than no vegetables at all. However, they are less desirable, as they may be old and
they may suffer more damage in canning than they do when frozen. Cans that are soldered may leach lead
into the food. Cans that are
crimped to close them are better.
COOKING
METHODS
Pressure-cooking. This is the best method of cooking
vegetables, and even meats. It is
very fast, cleanup is very easy, they taste the best, and most important, the
vegetables are more yang when cooked this way. For details, read Pressure-Cooking
on this website.
Other
methods. These
include steaming, stir-frying, and using a crock pot. I do not recommend roasting, baking or boiling vegetables
too often, although occasional baking or roasting are okay. If you boil vegetables, you must drink
the water because it will contain a lot of minerals.
More
cooking notes: Steaming vegetables.
The best way is to place a small amount of water in a saucepan. Add the vegetables. Bring the water to a boil, and then
turn down the flame and let them steam in the water for about 30-40 minutes.
This is the
best steaming method because it retains the most souls in the vegetables. This may sound unusual but food always
contains souls. Drink the cooking
water in this case, as it will contain many minerals.
Stir-frying vegetables. This is okay but it is high temperature
and you have to cook them enough.
We donÕt want vegetables crunchy.
I do not recommend coconut oil – too yin.
Crock
pot vegetables. Vegetables can be placed in a crock pot without cutting them
up at all, in most cases, which saves time and keeps all the tasty juices
inside.
They cook
slowly and usually wonÕt burn. You
can set them in the crock pot at bedtime and they will be cooked and ready to
eat when you wake up. You can also
set them in the crock pot before you leave home for work, and they will be
cooked and ready to eat when you arrive home later. You can add chicken or meat and have a complete meal, all
cooked for you with very little effort.
Seasoning
vegetables. It is often
best to cook vegetables without added salt or spices. When the vegetables are cooked, then you may add a small
amount of mild herbs such as a little oregano, rosemary, thyme, curry powder,
or any of a dozen other mild herbs and spices.
If you begin
with good quality vegetables, they will have wonderful flavors.
Leftovers. While fresh is best, to save time you may cook enough for
two days. It is best not to keep
leftovers more than a day or two, as they will deteriorate somewhat.
Fermenting
vegetables. I do not
recommend eating these, except for some sauerkraut. Problems with fermented vegetables are:
1.
They
are very yin because they are a)
raw, and b) combined with bacteria or yeasts, both of which are very yin.
2. Some
fermented foods are toxic with aldehydes. This is potentially a serious problem
if you eat them regularly. A very
bad one is kombucha tea, but the problem extends to
others. For more, read Aldehydes and Fermented Foods on this website.
HOW
MUCH?
I
find that everyone needs to eat 2-3 cups of cooked vegetables, at
least three times daily or about 9-10 cups of cooked vegetables daily. Measure the amount when cooked, not
raw.
Another way
to say this is to eat about 70% of your diet as cooked vegetables. This may seem like a lot, but it is not
that difficult with a little practice.
Eat some with every meal.
Food
combining. You may have
2-4 types of vegetables at each meal.
Try to mix colors and flavors for variety.
Cooked
vegetables should be the basis for, or staple food for every meal. In addition, you may have one other
type of food – either one protein or one starch. These simple food combinations greatly
assist digestion and utilization of your food.
USE
TOPPINGS IF YOU DO NOT LIKE SIMPLE COOKED VEGETABLES
To
help you eat your vegetables, and especially to help children to eat them, make
it fun. Have a dozen or more
toppings ready to put on your vegetables.
Here are some suggestions for toppings:
Fresh cream, whipped cream or butter
Olive oil
Some plain yogurt
Grated cheese, preferably raw, full-fat
cheese
Mustard sauce. Mustard is an excellent herb
Other herbs of many kinds
Almond butter mixed with a little water
Thai – peanut butter sauce
Chinese – real soy sauce
A few chopped nuts or seeds
Salad dressings you make yourself or
you buy
Sesame dressing
Pesto sauce
Relishes
Tomato and Chile pepper sauces like
Tabasco sauce if you wish, but only occasionally. Peppers and tomato are nightshade family vegetables, which
are best avoided. Hot spices are
irritating, and are much less recommended for this reason.
To thicken sauces, arrowroot powder is
superb and very nutritious
For
fancier vegetable recipes, many natural food cook books can be helpful. One that is completely dedicated to
nutritional balancing science is Joyful Cooking by Joy Feldman.
CHILDREN
AND VEGETABLES
Many
parents have trouble getting their children to eat vegetables. Here are a few ideas:
1. DonÕt
lecture your children. Instead,
set a great example. Eat plenty of
vegetables yourself. Ideally, fill
half your plate filled with vegetables whenever you eat, at least twice
daily. Children will often imitate
you.
2. Create
tasty sauces your children enjoy to put over the vegetables. See the
suggestions above for ideas.
3. Disguise
vegetables in other dishes, if needed. For ideas, read the article
entitled Fourteen Ways To Disguise Vegetables.
4. Puree
vegetables if a child does not like the texture of vegetables. To make a puree soup, cook vegetables
for 10 minutes or more. Then pour
the mix into a blender and blend for about 15 seconds. Then cook it some more and most
vegetables will not be recognizable.
5. Make it
fun. Grow a garden. For young children, carve little faces
on vegetables, slice them creatively, arrange them creatively on a plate, and in other ways make them attractive
to children. Dip them in fun
sauces or otherwise make them more attractive.
6. Start
introducing vegetables when children are very young. This can help children to feel they are
just normal food. For instance,
frozen peas can help toddlers when teething and make a refreshing snack in hot
weather for older children as well.
7. Beware of
allowing your children to mix and play with children who have learned to hate
vegetables. This is all
too common.
8. For
quick, easy meals and snacks for children and adults, read Fast Food For Nutritional Balancing.
Dried
vegetable capsules. These will
supply extra vegetables. However,
the vegetables are raw, which is yin.
Also, do not use superfood vegetable powders,
as they are usually rancid, or they go rancid quickly, even in the
refrigerator. Only use capsules.
Dried
vegetable capsules are no substitute for eat loads of cooked vegetables!
JUICING
VEGETABLES
Juicing
is
when the vegetables are run through a juicer that removes the pulp or
fiber. So one does not get the
fiber, just the juice. This
concentrates many nutrients in the vegetables. Carrot is a popular one to juice, as it is quite sweet and
delicious. You can add some
greens, some ginger, turnip, beet or other raw vegetables as well for more
richness, flavor or therapeutic reasons.
I
suggest that most adults today drink 10-12 ounces of carrot juice daily. This will provide an important form of
calcium and many other nutrients that most everyone needs. Do not skip this aspect of a
nutritional balancing program or any health program.
However,
more than this much juice is not helpful for most people. It is far too yin, it upsets
the blood sugar in many cases, and it can tear up the digestive tract in some
cases. Avoid becoming a juice
fanatic, please.
Which
juicer is best? Any juicer
will do. The least costly are the
centrifugal juicers. The
masticating type such as the Champion or Green Power are a little easier to
clean, perhaps, and may extract a little more juice.
What
about blenders for carrot juice?
Blenders require that you add some water to the juice, which is not
good. Also, they leave the pulp
intact, which is not best. Use a
juicer, not a blender.
You can also
buy fresh carrot juice at the health food store, or at some supermarkets. For much more on this topic, read Carrot Juice on this website.
VEGETABLE
SNACKS – DRIED, FREEZE-DRIED AND CHIPS
In recent
years, health food stores have begun selling plastic containers of dried vegetables. These are okay as snacks, though they may be a bit more
costly.
Another
recent innovation are vegetable chips. These are also okay for snacks,
especially if they do not contain sugar and chemical additives.
None
of these, however, is a substitute for eating loads of cooked vegetables.
Harmful
vegetables. Vegetables can
occasionally aggravate health conditions.
For example, I suggest avoiding completely the nightshade vegetables – white and red potatoes, tomatoes, all
peppers, including hot peppers, red and green peppers, and eggplant. Eating them can aggravate joint pain in
some people, and they all contain a poison called solanin. Your digestion will improve if it is
weak, as it is in most people, by eliminating these vegetables.
FRUITS
VERSUS VEGETABLES
Fruits are
defined as the expanded ovaries of plants. All contain seeds, although a few have been bred to be
seedless, such as seedless grapes.
Fruits are much less nutritious than vegetables, as a group. They are much higher in water and in
sugar, as a rule, than vegetables.
Fruits are
also much more yin than vegetables.
This is the main reason I do not recommend eating any fruit.
Vegetables
that are really fruits. Some
so-called ÒvegetablesÓ are really fruits.
That is, they are expanded ovaries of plants, and they contain
seeds. Please avoid these foods,
as a general rule. The only
exception is some olive oil. They
include:
1.
All nightshade vegetables: These include all tomatoes, white,
red and other potatoes, eggplant, and all peppers – both sweet red,
yellow and green peppers, and hot chile peppers of
all varieties, of which there are hundreds.
2.
Summer squashes, such as summer squash, zuccini,
sunburst and maybe others. These
are all more yin. Winter squashes
are also fruits, but a little is okay because they are less yin. These include acorn, butternut, and
spaghetti squash.
3.
Others include
cucumbers, okra, and maybe others.
Green beans or string beans, and peas are also technically fruits. However, they not very yin and are
excellent vegetables for everyone.
HERBS
VERSUS VEGETABLES
Some people
tell me they wonÕt eat many vegetables, but they will sprinkle herbs on their
food. This is not good enough!
Vegetables
differ from herbs and spices in that vegetables are grown as foods. They can be eaten in large quantities
on a daily basis. This is
necessary today if you want optimum health because everyone is mineral-starved
and vegetables are the main source of minerals.
Herbs and
spices are for garnishes, flavoring and some can be used as drug
medicines. Herbs, by definition,
contain slightly toxic substances that make them unsuitable for everyday
eating, except in very small quantities.
Do not listen to the lies of some health authorities that there are
simply Ònourishing herbsÓ that you can eat all you want. This is not true.
References
1. J.
Applied Nutrition, 1993:45(1);35-39.
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