Two cups of romaine fulfill about 30 percent of your daily vitamin A, and nearly three-quarters of your vitamin K, per the USDA. Romaine lettuce’s dark green color, long leaves, and crunchy texture make it a very popular salad base. It’s excellent on top of a sandwich, stirred into an omelet, and sautéed in olive oil.” “What I love about having spinach on hand is that it can easily be incorporated into so many dishes without ‘taking over’ flavorwise. “Spinach makes a great salad base,” says Kennedy. Pair spinach with strawberries, balsamic, and a sprinkle of feta cheese for a flavor-packed salad. Cooked spinach also contains more folate than most salad greens, according to Kennedy, which helps convert the food you eat into energy and produces healthy red and white blood cells, according to the National Institutes of Health. When spinach is cooked, it’s an excellent source of iron (more than one-third of your daily requirement), as well as vitamin C (20 percent of your daily requirement) and fiber, which is essential for digestive health, per the USDA. And the deep, vibrant color of spinach hints at its nutritional profile: 1 cup has 16 percent of your daily requirement of vitamin A, and all your daily vitamin K, according to the USDA. "The most nutritious salad greens are generally the darkest in color," Kennedy says. Subtle in flavor, spinach is anything but when it comes to nutrition. “However you serve kale, just be sure to remove the tough ribbing first,” Kennedy says. Kale also pairs well with roasted squash, nuts, seeds, and beans. “It's simple to prepare sautéed with some onions and garlic, amazing baked into ‘chips,’ and makes a great base for a salad.” For the salad, if you chop the kale into small pieces or allow it to sit in the dressing for a little bit before eating (or both), it becomes more tender, she explains. “Kale is delicious raw or cooked,” says Kennedy. While slightly higher in calories than other greens, cooked kale provides about 14 percent of your daily requirement of calcium, which is essential for building and maintaining strong bones. It also contains 23 percent of your daily requirement of vitamin C, which is important for the growth and repair of all tissues in the body and helps maintain a healthy immune system and kale also has more than four times your daily requirement of vitamin K, crucial to form proteins necessary for normal blood clotting, build stronger bones, and protect against osteoporosis, according to the National Institutes of Health. Department of Agriculture (USDA), just one cup of cooked kale meets 19 percent of your daily requirement for vitamin A, which helps maintain good vision, a healthy immune system and reproductive system, and proper functioning of the heart, lungs, and kidneys. Kale is a trendy green for a reason - according to the U.S. This definitive ranking can help you when you’re ready to branch out from kale. Getting a variety of leafy greens in your diet is a good strategy to take advantage of everything they have to offer, but in general, the darker the leaf, the more nutrients it contains. While nearly all greens have something to offer, they can differ somewhat in the type and amount of fiber, vitamins, and minerals they contain, says Kelly Kennedy, RDN, the staff nutritionist for Everyday Health. Another study, published in March the same year in the Journal of Nutrition, found that people who consumed one cup of nitrate-rich vegetables a day had significantly stronger muscle function in their lower limbs, and walked an average of 4 percent faster than people with the lowest nitrate intake, independent of their physical activity levels. In particular, research has found that leafy greens are one of the top sources of dietary nitrates, compounds that bring cardiovascular benefits.Īfter analyzing data from more than 50,000 people over a 23-year period, Danish researchers found that those who ate just one cup of nitrate-rich vegetables a day had up to a 26 percent lower risk of heart disease, as reported in their study, published in April 2021 in the European Journal of Epidemiology. These frequently lauded vegetables have been linked to a number of health benefits. You already know that salad is good for you, and one of the main reasons why is that it’s usually built on a nutritious base of leafy greens.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |