It’s important to think green when we’re eating healthy, but why is that color in particular key when it comes to our vegetables? Well I’m getting the answer in today’s Healthy Eats. (lively music) So I’m with Stephanie from Food Wonderful. Now Stephanie, we all know that we should be reaching for broccoli and spinach, but why is green the magic color?
All vegetables are great, but I especially love my green vegetables. They are so nutritious. So when we talk about the nutrient profile of our leafy greens, we’re talking about getting a lot of vitamins and minerals, especially things like iron and calcium that you might not think are coming from your vegetables.
We’re also getting a ton of fiber. We get a ton of antioxidants, and we definitely just know that diets that are high in fruits and vegetables and especially these green vegetables are associated with better health outcomes all across the board.
– So we’re talking about eating our greens on a daily basis. How many servings should we be getting? – So there’s no specific recommendation for just green vegetables. We do typically recommend between five and seven servings of vegetables a day.
One easy technique that I recommend is using the MyPlate method. So when you sit down for a meal, take a look at your plate. Is about half your food fruits and vegetables, and if yes, then it’s probably pretty balanced. (lively music)
– The cool thing about green vegetables is that you can use them and serve them in a variety of ways. – Absolutely.
– You can go juicing, you can go salads.
– There are so many ways to prepare our green vegetables.
For example, we have today some roasted Brussel sprouts. That’s my favorite way to prepare Brussel sprouts. You know, if I can just change the way that I prepare my vegetables and then actually enjoy them more or eat more of them, then that’s what I’m gonna do.
– Curious, if we are going to cook our green vegetables, are we losing the nutrients? Should I be fearful of that?
– No, I don’t think so. There are some people who are gonna say that you know, steaming your vegetables gets the most nutrition out of a vegetable. Sure, maybe that’s true, but if you don’t enjoy the vegetable when it’s steamed, you aren’t gonna eat it. And so the most nutritious vegetable is the vegetable that you’re eating. – One of the most common ways that we are eating our greens is in a salad.
– Yeah.
– But that gives us the opportunity to add more healthy ingredients into the salad.
– We can really go crazy with a lot of variety. You could add fruits, you could avocado. That’s, whatever. Your imagination is the limit for what you can do with salad. So today you’re gonna show us how to make an arugula salad. (lively music)
– We have a handful of ingredients that we’re gonna toss on. Let’s start with our avocado. You can take a knife and just slice into the avocado while it’s still in its peel. Once we have the slice, I’m just gonna take my spoon, dig in and now I don’t need to chop this. Next we’ll add in our sweet potatoes. So these are some sweet potatoes that I roasted with a little bit of cinnamon and salt and pepper.
– What’s next?
– Last but not least is some blueberries. I think that these all complement each other very nicely. There’s a nice little sweetness to sweet potato. There’s sweetness in the blueberries and then the avocado gives you a little bit of richness.
– You wanna mix it up and we’ll try it?
– Yeah for sure.
– Definitely these salads look delicious and I cannot wait to dig in, but first let’s recap what we talked about. And that is by eating more green vegetables in our diet, we can live a healthier life.
– Green vegetables are so nutritious. So many vitamins and minerals. So much fiber, just so much that’s good for us that we, that really we need in our bodies, and by incorporating more green vegetables into our diet, we’re really able to improve the quality of our overall nutrition.
– Thank you so much. How do you incorporate green vegetables into your diet? Tag us on Instagram with your favorite recipe @LivingHealthyTV. Okay now let’s dig in.
