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Leafy Green Vegetables for your Health and Skin
It might have been typical for our ancestors to walk along and eat up to six pounds of leaves in a day, but that’s certainly not common for us. Modern American people don’t even get a handful of leafy greens each day. It’s such a terrible thing because these leafy green vegetables are chock full of vitamins that can keep us healthy well into old age. Vitamins aren’t all they’re full of though. These vegetables are also powerhouses for heart health, and they contain multiple phytochemicals and antioxidants that protect our cells from oxidative stress and cancer.
Dark Green Leafy Vegetable Juice
Can you drink dark green leafy vegetable juice? Why not? If you feel troubled by the prospect of having to chow down on leafy greens at your dinnertime meal or in a snack pack side dish container at lunch, you can always buy a commercial, heavy-duty juicer to juice those dark leafy greens. Just add apples, berries, and pears to sweeten the taste. The upsides to doing this are that you get more greens, it tastes sweeter, and it only takes a couple of minutes to finish several servings. Brands like Vitamix, K-Tec, and Jack LaLane are a good place to start.
What are the Health Benefits of Dark Green Leafy Vegetables?
The health benefits of dark green leafy vegetables are tremendous. They’re the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. They are a rich source of minerals and vitamins, and there are also a variety of phytonutrients in them. They even have trace amounts of omega-3 fats. That seems pretty phenomenal for a simple vegetable group. The main vitamin that you get in dark green leafy vegetables is vitamin K. You get up to nine times the amount of Vitamin K that is recommended by the FDA with just a single serving.
What Does Vitamin K do in the Body?
Vitamin K helps to regulate the clotting of blood, helps protects bones from osteoporosis, and it can even help prevent atherosclerosis by reducing calcium in the arterial plaques. If you’ll remember from reading some of our previous articles, like the ones on Vitamin C and omega-3 fatty acids, those nutrients also help with heart problems. These three nutrients together are all found in dark leafy greens.
Are Dark Green Leafy Vegetables More Important as You Get Older?
When you get older, your body needs more protection from heart disease, cancer, and oxidative stress, and it’s important to start integrating dark leafy green vegetables into your diet as soon as possible. The FDA recommends at least five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables each day, of multiple colors, but if you had to start somewhere, then greens would be the best place.
What are the Best Dark Green Leafy Vegetables to Start With?
A lot of people have no idea where to start because they’ve never sampled them before. They might have thought that a bag of mixed salad greens was the final say on the matter. Some of the best dark green leafy vegetables to start with are kale, collard greens, watercress, arugula,spinach, and you can even throw in a few cruciferous vegetables to the mix, like cabbage and broccoli. If you’re tired of using a steamer or microwave to get these all down each day, and you like the idea of eating mashed potatoes at dinner instead of dark leafy greens, then just switch to a juicer. You can always get a blender and make delicious chilled soups in the morning. One of the best books to learn more about this is Eating for Beauty by David Wolfe. He has a lot of great recipes for dark leafy greens that make them more appealing and delicious.