I went to an event with a group of women. A very attractive and at the same time healthy appetizer was served: a salad with arugula and other beautifully colored leaves, garnished with pomegranate and slices of duck ham, without sauce, just a little oil and vinegar. It had a funny name, I can’t remember it. Most of the women at my table ate only the slices of duck ham, which they carefully plucked from that strange grass. 4 slices of duck ham on a big bun, that’s what they ate. Those who knew what arugula was said it was not good, it was bitter. Very few ate some of the leaves though.
Regarding the consumption of vegetables, there are 2 major currents: the traditionalist current and the modernist current. In my opinion, both are unbalanced.
The traditionalist current
Vegetables are nasty things, but sometimes unavoidable in soup and stew. Fried onions, garlic sauce, a few bay leaves and some dill. A bit of coleslaw, just a bit, alongside a large steak with fries and some big slices of bread. You know how it is, everything with bread. Vegetables in the traditionalist current mostly mean potatoes. Lots of potatoes. If we put as much zeal into making friends with the rest of the vegetables as we put into inventing as many recipes as possible with potatoes, we would be a much healthier people. The few vegetables that we use from generations to generation must be boiled or fried well, until every trace of enzyme and vitamin in it dies. If it is a little crunchy, it means that you are not a good housewife. Only salted roasted peanuts, pretzels and bagged chips are allowed to be crunchy. Vegetables should be a soft and nice thing that does not resist when we gobble it up. Fruits? Apples, pears, plums, melons. Are there other fruits?
The modernist current
Vegetables are everything, the salt and pepper of the universe. If you eat a little meat or fish you are lame, a sick man who will die tomorrow, full of cholesterol in your hardened arteries and toxins that poison your blood. Every meal consists of a big bowl of vegetables, garnished with legumes, seeds and nuts. Avocado and maca powder are a must. In the morning a big smoothie of fruit and protein powder, because everyone knows we need complete proteins, but we won’t get them from meat, meat is not good, but protein powder is healthy. Fruits? Bananas, pineapples, lychees, strawberries in the middle of winter, because we need 10 servings of fruit daily, even in the season when fruit naturally does not exist. Yes, they exist, let’s fully enjoy the benefits of modernity!
Balance and harmony
Vegetables are… vegetables. They are neither diabolical nor holy. They are necessary in the daily diet, along with foods of animal origin. We need both. The proportion in which we consume them is important. By volume, vegetables should predominate, about three quarters vegetables, one quarter meat, offal or eggs. Or legumes, alternatively. Nutritionally, animal foods are denser, so a small piece of steak that fits in the palm of your hand is enough. Or two eggs. Vegetables at every meal, this is not optional, but necessary.
How to eat vegetables
Enzymes from “living foods”, i.e. fresh and uncooked, are lost through heat processing. That is clear and non-negotiable. Do we need enzymes? We do. The human body also produces enzymes, but the addition of enzymes from raw foods is welcome.
Water-soluble vitamins are also somewhat lost by prolonged boiling or baking. Fat-soluble vitamins are more resistant to heat processing, but they also have their patience. Regarding the mineral content, some are lost, others increase their digestibility when cooked. Antioxidants like lycopene and beta-carotene are better absorbed by the body when vegetables are cooked.
It would be best to alternate raw vegetables with sautéed, steamed, stir fried or scalded vegetables for a minute or two. That way we will benefit from all the goodies. How NOT to do it? We don’t boil the vegetables, leave and come back in an hour, throw away the water they were boiled in and then eat those squeezed vegetables. Nor should we mix too many kinds of vegetables, with eggs, butter or oil, cheese, yogurt, sugar and possibly flour, the so-called puddings baked in the oven for hours. I call this “dead vegetable carcasses”.
What about fruits?
Let me tell you a story I heard from Dr. Robert Lustig. In ancient times, when man was a hunter-gatherer, he ate fruits in the fall, when they ripened in the area where he lived. They were sweet and good, so people climbed the trees or rummaged through the bushes and feasted on the fruit in abundance. Since during the rest of the year there weren’t many sweet food sources, the body interpreted this invasion of sugar as a signal of the approach of the cold season. In addition to vitamins, minerals and enzymes, fruit is primarily fructose, i.e. sugar.
Oh, winter is coming? Then let’s build some adipose tissue, because it keeps warm, and winter is cold, central heating, radiators and hot tubs haven’t been invented yet. Fruits were the signal to wrap the body with a “blanket” of fat. Blanket that they got rid of with the warm season. In the winter they ate mainly meat and whatever tubers they could dig up, and in the spring and summer meat and vegetables, leaves and what else they had in their native area. Fruits were seasonal, the only source of sugar in those days.
In modern times, sugar is in our diet non-stop, with the invention of synthetic sugar. We have sugar in everything, not just in sweets, but in almost all processed foods: sausages, yogurts, cream cheese, bread, pickles. And lots of soda. There are many kinds of sugar, mechanically and chemically extracted from everything: fruits, grains, trees, alcohols, honey, artificial sweeteners. We eat fruit all the time, brought from exotic places that many of us can’t even locate on a map. Sugar is the most widespread drug. And it is considered normal, because everyone consumes sugar, even without knowing it, from morning until late at night.
So… fruits?
We hear it everywhere: eat vegetables and fruits every day. I would say this: vegetables yes, but go easier on the fruits. Especially the very sweet ones. Let’s eat fruit in moderation, it’s not a daily must. Let’s eat the fruit whole, unpeeled, where the peel is edible. Fruit juice, no matter how natural, is mostly the sugar in that fruit without the fiber that moderates that sugar.
In season we can make a fruit fast with cherries, strawberries, melons or whatever other fruit is ripe on our land, carefully adjusting the rest of the food to this fast. But let it be temporary and with attention to the body. Should we eat exotic fruits every day? Better not.
What if I don’t like vegetables?
It’s normal not to like all vegetables, we’re not machines. The fact that we are not machines is an advantage, we can program or reprogram ourselves. That is, if in childhood we were educated in the traditionalist current, we can re-educate ourselves in adulthood. This is after it gets into our heads that vegetables are beneficial, varied and tasty, if we have the patience to look for them, try them and learn to prepare them.
Have you had an unfortunate experience with a vegetable? Did you not like the taste of it or did you bloat? Choose another way to consume it. Hide it among other vegetables, cover it with a tasty sauce or eat it cooked, not raw, or vice versa. Some leaves are bitter, mix them with spinach or lettuce, which are sweet. Don’t like cauliflower? I have a lot of ways to prepare cauliflower here on the blog, I’m sure you’ll like it in some way, even if you don’t declare yourself completely in love with cauliflower.
Conclusions
Let’s put vegetables at every meal, alongside our favorite food. Raw, sautéed, steamed, stir fried, salad, with or without sauce. At first the gut will protest, but after a while it will get used to it. Constipation will disappear, as will the extra pounds, we will sleep better, the blood work will normalize, and we will be healthier.
