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Go Green Growing Vegetables
growing vegetables
Growing your own vegetables really doesn’t need some special talent but mainly the will and motivation to do it. Knowing it contributes toward your own health and well being as well as to those of the ones you care most, also helps.
You also help the Go Green movement making a difference as to how the world is tackling the climate change.. The truth is that you can easily learn enough to be growing useful crops very quickly, and each session spent in your garden teaches you even more.
You will learn much that is unique to your own situation, such as local soil conditions, your particular aspect in relation to the sun, and oddities that relate to your local microclimate. You will learn most of this by getting out and giving it a go.
The taste of home grown vegetables is vastly superior to that of the commercially grown produce. Have you heard people complain that tomatoes no longer have any taste? They will have when you grow your own – you will never taste better. The lack of taste with the commercial crop is not all the fault of the growers, as they are under pressure to produce a crop, of uniform size and colour, to the schedule of the wholesale market, and ultimately the supermarket. You set your own schedule.
The freshness of your own crop is a big plus. Vegetables I have bought from the supermarket, and stored in the refrigerator, have started to become inedible after a few days. I have had home grown produce still fresh in the refrigerator after 2 weeks!
Typically, your home garden will produce a generous yield, and can readily help pay for the cost of growing them. You can effectively end up having free vegetables. Summer, especially, is usually a time of abundance, even glut, as family and friends leave your place with perhaps more produce than they had expected to see. A tip – when giving away fresh produce, try to limit your generosity – it is better to give a small amount to many rather than to give to the few more than they can actually use.
One of the turn-offs to trying something you have not done before is the intimidating flood of information (and misinformation) you will receive.
If you are browsing one of the major bookstores, you may find hundreds of books on the topic – which do you buy? To begin with, look for the simple, basic information. Do not bother with those full of jargon – you will learn the technical terms as you go.
You will hear folklore from the family, such as “Uncle Henry always put … (you name it) … on his … (name it again)”. Folklore is part of our heritage, but there is no guarantee of its usefulness.
You will hear from the office genius, who has done nothing, but still knows all the answers – nod wisely, and then ignore him.
Plants evolved millions of years before humans, and they actually want to grow. It has been said that in many cases plants grow despite what we do to help them. If you provide the basics, and these are reasonable nutrition and regular watering, Mother Nature does the rest – let her work for you.
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Fruit & Vegetables in Tablet Form – Altadrine
December 24, 2009 by admin
Filed under Supplements And Vitamins
Very few people actually consume the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables. A diet lacking fruit and vegetables is a very poor diet as fruit and vegetables contain substantial quantities of essential nutrients in a rational proportion. Fruit and vegetables are often not consumed because apart from the expense, life is becoming faster and it takes time to shop and cook them. Doctors and nutritionists recommend a mixed and varied diet which means that one must not always eat the same fruit and vegetables. Needless to say that fruit and vegetables are excellent sources of nutrients, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and fibres.
The very latest trend is a food supplement in tablet form which can substitute fruit and vegetables for those people who do not consume any, or enough. Altadrine Fruit and Vegetables by Alta Care Laboratoires – Paris, makes it possible for you and those around you to have a healthy, varied diet and all in a tablet!
The Altadrine Fruit and Vegetables Tablets are as extremely beneficial to one’s health. Water is extracted from fruit and vegetables without ever using heat, thereby preserving the antioxidants, enzymes, fibres, amino acids, vitamins and minerals – the good stuff that is so hard to get in our normal diets.
The tablets of Altadrine Fruit and Vegetables are colour coded – orange for fruit and green for vegetables. The orange fruit tablet is the equivalent of 6 fruit concentrates: pineapple, prickly pear, grapefruit, orange, blueberry and papaya. The green tablet, which is the vegetable tablet, is the equivalent of 6 vegetable concentrates: beetroot, broccoli, spinach, spiruline, tomato and carrot.
Altadrine Fruit and Vegetables Tablets contain no additives, or added salts or sugars; just fruit and vegetables grown in pristine conditions, tested and harvested at their peak nutritional value.
It is recommended that one should take one orange tablet – the Fruit tablet in the morning, and one green tablet – the Vegetable tablet, in the evening. Following such a varied and well balanced diet has never been so easy!
Altadrine range and all ALTA CARE Laboratoires products are made in France.
wwww.altacare.com
5 Fabulous Tips for Fruits and Vegetables
Eating fruits and vegetables is one of the best ways to maintain good health. Fruits and vegetables are an important part of a healthy diet. They contain vitamins, phytochemicals, and minerals that can protect your body from diseases like diabetes, cancers, and heart diseases. Ideally, you should consume five kinds of vegetables and two kinds of fruits each day.
People are shifting to fruit and vegetable snacks instead of fast food and candy bars. It is essential to understand the nutritional value of the foods you are eating to get the most benefits. Many people follow the rule of including at least five servings of fruits and vegetables in their daily diet. Be sure to include a variety of fruits and vegetables instead of sticking to only specified varieties.
Understanding the nutrient value of each fruit and vegetable can help you develop healthy food choices. Some common vegetables and fruits that may be included in your diet are corn, iceberg lettuce, potatoes, apples and bananas.
These are nutritious but you should also eat others for added nutritional benefits. Eating fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin A, beta-carotene, vitamin C and fiber can help your body to guard you against numerous diseases.
It may be confusing when you try to make a good choice of fruits or vegetables for your consumption.
The following 5 Fabulous Tips for may help you make great choices of fruits and vegetables for your daily consumptions:
(I) Include at least one orange and one dark green vegetable to your daily diet to get some vitamin A and folate.
Orange vegetables include squash, carrots, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, or yams. You can substitute orange-colored fruit for an orange vegetable though the amount of vitamin A will, of course, vary.
Orange colored fruits include cantaloupes, nectarines, mangos, papaya, apricots, and peaches. Dark green vegetables include dandelion greens, broccoli, arugula, chard, mustard greens, collards, spinach, kale or romaine lettuce.
(II) Do not compromise on your nutrition even when you are short on time.
Pre-bagged vegetables, like leafy greens, baby carrots or green beans can be easily prepared for a salad or tossed for a quick stir-fry.
(III) Frozen or canned vegetables have some nutritional value but fresh is usually considered the best choice.
Frozen foods retain most of their nutrients.
Select only canned vegetables with low sodium content. Or, you can drain these vegetables to lower their salt and sodium content.
When choosing frozen fruit packed in juice, select unsweetened frozen fruit. Fruits in sugar syrup contain more calories.
Other fruits are sometimes packed in pear juice because it is sweeter than many other fruit juices.
(IV) Choose vegetables and fruits over just buying juices.
Fruits and vegetables eaten whole contain more fiber and help with easier digestion.
An occasional vegetable juice drink may be beneficial. However, avoid vegetables juices with high salt content.
Choose 100% fruit juices over fruit-flavored drinks. “Fruit juice drinks”, (they may contain very low amounts of the actual juice), cocktails or punches.
(V) Choose vegetables and fruits prepared with little or no added fat, sugar or salt. Some products, like vegetable chips, ketchup, fruit candies, fruit jams or spreads and vegetable or fruit drinks or punches may have a high level of sugar or salt. It is best to avoid these foods. Also, avoid poutine, French fries, zucchini sticks, tempura, and onion rings if you can get, for instance, a baked sweet potato or potato or have a plate of salad instead.
To find out more fabulous information about how to incorporate a healthy lifestyle with more fruits and vegetables order your copy of Fabulous Fruit and Vegetables today.
Weight Loss – 6 Quick Tips to Eat More Vegetables
August 9, 2009 by admin
Filed under Weight Loss
We all know that vegetables are greatly beneficial for the body, but yet we do not like to eat them much. The excuse is always in the taste. Eating raw vegetables are difficult for a start. They are hard to chew and taste blank. As the health benefits in eating more vegetables has far outweighed the taste part of it, it is good reason to find ways to make them more palatable and appealing to our taste buds.
# 1. Time the serving
Offer vegetables such as broccoli at the beginning of the meal when you and your family are feeling the hungriest. This way the tendency to eat the vegetables are most likeliest. Have them served in a variety of combinations and color such as boiled peas, potatoes, carrots, beans and corn.
# 2. Vegetables in sauces
Lightly steamed vegetables mixed with some sauces and herbs such as garlic do make a difference. My children do not like to eat them you may say. But with the lightly steamed vegetables mixed with oyster sauces and flaxseed oil, eating them is much more pleasant now. Even if your husband hates
vegetables, do not despair. Think of adding vegetables in some meat or seafood dishes cooked with some sauces in a casserole, he will tend to eat more vegetables than he realizes. Add the vegetables last after the meat is cooked so that the green color of the vegetables is preserved to
make them looked yummy.
# 3. Spaghetti sauce with vegetables
When serving your family favorite food such as spaghetti, remember to add in some vegetables into the sauce. Cook your minced meat first before adding chopped tomatoes, zucchini and broccoli into the sauce along with some garlic and herb.
Mix well the ingredients and your spaghetti dish is ready for serving. Your family will love the nutritious spaghetti dinner which is actually good for them.
# 4. Tasty vegetable soups
Bring to boil a small pot of soup cooked with some chicken bones or pork ribs. Throw in the green vegetables such as spinach and add in a pinch of salt and serve hot when the soup starts to boil again. The vegetable soup is nutritious as the vitamins are contained in the soup. It will make you feel full much faster and you tend to eat less of the other food portions.
# 5. Vegetable noodle snacks
If you are into eating ramen or instant noodles, adding in some cut carrots, cabbage and any green vegetables makes it a nice dish. It is fast to prepare and putting an egg or some meat to it makes this high carb food away from considering it a junk. Some may prefer to have it with raw
sliced cucumbers. You should refrain from adding too much of the unnatural soup based flavors as the sodium content is
high.
# 6. Mixed vegetables
Prepare vegetables in new ways such as stir frying very lightly with some salt or herbs. You can have plate of mixed vegetable fried together along with your favorite food, such as peas in macaroni and cheese or blend soft cooked carrots into mashed potatoes. Steam some sweet potatoes or bake this
high-fiber, vitamin-A rich food with a touch of sugar, cinnamon and cloves.
Eating more vegetables is an integral part of a weight loss program as it will help you to burn more calories and stay trim.
The Benefits Of Eating Raw Vegetables
The Benefits of Raw Vegetables
We’ve been told since birth to eat our vegetables and yet far too few of us actually do it. Even when we do get around to eating our vegetables it’s only after we’ve cooked out most of the natural nutrients that our body is desperately craving.
Keep in mind, as you proceed, that while all raw vegetables are incredibly beneficial, raw green vegetables actually serve as the basis of nearly all life on this planet. That may sound a bit extreme to you, but stop and consider for a moment that almost every organism on this planet survives by either eating raw green vegetables or by eating an animal that eats raw green vegetables…they really are that important.
I know, you’ve probably eaten most of your vegetables cooked since you can remember. Simply put, just because something has “always” been done a certain way doesn’t mean that it’s the best way to do it. You will get a lot more out of your vegetables if you consume them raw.
I specifically used the word “consume” because, in reality, you get the same benefits from raw green vegetable juice as you do from eating them whole and usually you get it faster. This is because raw vegetable juice takes less internal work to digest and is absorbed into the body almost instantly.
It seems that most people only know that they should eat vegetables because they remember mom telling them to; very few people seem to have a grasp on the amazing nutritional value of vegetables.
Raw vegetables are extremely rich in minerals, vitamins, trace elements, enzymes and natural sugars. All of these are things that your body needs to function properly and the raw veggies will help stabilize and normalize your natural bodily functions. They actually help pretty much ALL of your natural bodily functions operate.
You’ve probably heard about the necessity of vitamins and nutrients to your overall health your entire life, but the concept of enzymes may be new to you. Basically, the enzymes in raw vegetables help your body digest food. This is one of the reasons that green vegetables are sometimes considered “nature’s laxative,” because they get your stomach working properly.
The average American diet is actually comprised of quite a few foods that are incredibly difficult for our bodies to digest properly. When we aren’t digesting properly, the food sits in our stomach longer than it should and we miss out on any nutritional value it did possess.
Okay, so at this point, you may have started to become convinced about the necessity of vegetables…but why raw?
All of our cooking methods have been shown in scientific studies to reduce the amount of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes in vegetables. Of the cooking methods, steaming has been shown to retain the largest amount of vitamin content although it still reduces it.
Vegetables begin losing their valuable nutritional elements as soon as they are plucked, pulled or picked from the ground. For this reason, the additional loss of nutrients during cooking would be a smaller problem if we grew our own vegetables and cooked them the same day we harvested them.
However, most of us don’t live that way. The largest majority of us purchase our vegetables at the grocery store after they’ve been shipped hundreds or thousands of miles. During that time, the nutritional value has been seeping out of them.
Finally, to make matters worse, repeated studies have shown that commercially grown vegetables, right out of the ground, aren’t as rich in nutrients as they were 50 years ago. One large contributing factor to this is that farmers have found so many ways to make their crops grow faster that we aren’t receiving the full benefit of naturally mature vegetables.
It is admittedly extreme, but not that extreme, to state that any vegetable you get from the grocery store and then cook at home probably has the nutritional value of cardboard by the time it hits your stomach.
Start eating (or drinking) raw vegetables as soon as you can. Whenever possible, grow them yourself or purchase them from local farmer’s markets.
Health Benefits of Green Leafy Vegetables
Mother was right all along. Grandma also told you they were good for you. So why do Americans eat green leafy vegetables only about once or twice a week? Why are cabbage, broccoli, turnip greens, and spinach rarely seen at the American dinner table? Why is lettuce the only green vegetable that most Americans ever use, when green vegetables are recognized by nutritionists as one of the most inexpensive sources of so many important nutrients?
Leafy vegetables are ideal for weight management as they are typically low in calories. They are useful in reducing the risk of cancer and heart disease since they are low in fat, high in dietary fiber, and rich in folic acid, vitamin C, potassium and magnesium, as well as containing a host of phytochemicals, such as lutein, beta-cryptoxanthin, zeaxanthin, and beta-carotene. One study showed that an increment of one daily serving of green leafy vegetables, lowered the risk of cardiovascular disease by 11 percent. In the Adventist health study, the frequent consumption of green salads by African-Americans was associated with a substantially lower risk of mortality.
Because of their high magnesium content and low glycemic index, green leafy vegetables are also valuable for persons with type 2 diabetes. An increase of 1 serving/day of green leafy vegetables was associated with a 9 percent lower risk of diabetes. The high level of vitamin K in greens makes them important for the production of osteocalcin, a protein essential for bone health. The risk of hip fracture in middle-aged women was decreased 45% for one or more servings/day of green, leafy vegetables compared to fewer servings.
Green vegetables are also a major source of iron and calcium for any diet. Swiss chard and spinach are not considered good sources of calcium, due to their high content of oxalic acid. Green leafy vegetables are rich in beta-carotene, which can also be converted into vitamin A, and also improve immune function. Millions of children around the world have an increased risk of blindness, and other illnesses because of inadequate dietary vitamin A from green leafy vegetables.
Lutein and zeaxanthin, carotenoids found in dark-green leafy vegetables, are concentrated in the eye lens and macular region of the retina, and play a protective role in the eye. They protect against both cataract and age-related macular degeneration, the major cause of blindness in the elderly. Some studies suggest that lutein and zeaxanthin may help reduce the risk of certain types of cancer, such as breast and lung cancer, and may contribute to the prevention of heart disease and stroke.
Green veggies contain a variety of carotenoids, flavonoids and other powerful antioxidants that have cancer-protective properties. In a Swedish study, it was reported that eating 3 or more servings a week of green leafy vegetables significantly reduced the risk of stomach cancer, the fourth most frequent cancer in the world. Cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and broccoli are rich in indoles and isothiocyanates, which protect us against colon and other cancers. Broccoli sprouts have been reported to contain 10 or more times as much sulforaphane, a cancer-protective substance, than does mature broccoli. A higher consumption of green leafy vegetables has been shown to significantly decrease the risk of breast cancer and skin cancer.
Studies have identified a gene, connexin 43, whose expression is upregulated by chemopreventive carotenoids and which allows direct intercellular gap junctional communication. In many human tumors gap junctional communication is deficient and its upregulation is associated with decreased proliferation. Hence, the cancer-preventive properties of carotenoids are partly explained by their impact on gene regulation.
Quercetin is a bioflavonoid found in leafy green vegetables. Quercetin has an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity and displays unique anticancer properties. Quercetin is a natural compound that blocks substances involved in allergies and acts as an inhibitor of mast cell secretion, and causes a decrease in the release of interleukin-6.
There was considerable concern associated with the E.coli O157:H7 outbreak in the fall of 2006 (26 states were affected) that was associated with contaminated bagged baby spinach. The outbreak resulted in 205 confirmed illnesses and three deaths, with the infection causing bloody diarrhea and dehydration. FDA investigators suggested that the outbreak was possibly caused by the presence of wild pigs on the ranch, or that the irrigation water had been contaminated with cattle feces or grazing deer.
Green, leafy vegetables provide a great variety of colors from the bluish-green of kale to the bright kelly green of spinach. Leafy greens run the whole gamut of flavors, from sweet to bitter, from peppery to earthy. Young plants generally have small, tender leaves and a mild flavor. Many mature plants have tougher leaves and stronger flavors. Collards, Swiss chard, bok choy, and spinach provide a mild flavor while arugula, mizuna and mustard greens provide a peppery flavor. Bok choy is best known for use in stir-fries, since it remains crisp, even when cooked to a tender stage. One should always choose crisp leaves with a fresh vibrant green color. Yellowing is a sign of age and indicates that the greens may have an off flavor. Salad greens provide a whole range of important nutrients and phytochemicals to keep us healthy.
source-http://www.vegetarian-nutrition.info/updates/benefits-of-green-leafy-vegetables.php
Health Benefits of Vegetables
Isothiocyanates are highly effective in suppressing the growth of human prostate cells at concentrations achievable through the dietary intake of cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and watercress. A Japanese study observed that cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and Chinese cabbage decreased the risk of stomach and colorectal cancer.
- A vegetarian diet was found to significantly reduce the risk of uric acid kidney stone formation. Fruit and vegetables provide an alkaline residue which reduces the risk of uric acid crystallization in the urine.
- In a Japanese study, the daily intake of green-yellow vegetables was associated with a significant 26% reduction in the risk of death from total stroke in men and women compared with an intake of once or less per week. Daily fruit intake was associated with a significant 35% reduction in risk of total stroke in men and a 25% reduction in women.
- Lutein intake, in the Iowa Women’s Study, was associated with a lower risk of ovarian cancer. Lutein is the carotenoid pigment found in broccoli, spinach and other green vegetables.
- New research data provide support for the notion that a high intake of broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts reduces the risk of prostate cancer.
- Dietary antioxidants play a role in preventing age-related cataracts by preventing the oxidation of proteins and lipids within the lens. Spinach, kale, broccoli, and other leafy vegetables rich in the carotenoid lutein, reduce the risk of developing cataracts. In the Nurses’ Health Study, women who ate spinach and other greens at least twice a week had an 18 percent lower risk of cataract surgery than women who consumed them less than once a month. In the Health Professionals’ Study, men who ate broccoli more than twice a week had a 23 percent lower risk of cataract surgery than men who consumed broccoli less than once a month.
- The beta-carotene in carrots and spinach is absorbed three times better from the cooked vegetable than from the raw vegetable.
source-http://www.vegetarian-nutrition.info/bytes/vegetables.php
