Daily Archives: September 3, 2012

Everyone has their favorite vegetable story right? Ok, well a few of us have our favorite vegetable stories, of which I will spare you mine today.  But the vegetable is worthy of discussion.  Everyone tells you to eat more vegetables.  Why? Why eat vegetables? Here’s a few compelling reasons why.

Vegetables are colorful and look good around the house.  Being colorful is the vegetable’s way of saying,”Choose me, choose me.  I am bursting with the nutrients your body needs.”  As a rule of thumb, the more colorful the vegetable, the more nutrients it will have to offer you.   So although iceberg lettuce is a vegetable, it’s darker cousins are better choices if you are going to have a salad.  You are also less likely to pour blue cheese all over a baby spring mix salad as you would over a wedge of iceberg lettuce.   The colorful vegetables also have more taste, so you don’t have to drown them in fat-laden white sauces to enjoy flavor.

Vegetables like to go naked.  That’s right.  You can wash and eat  them naked.  Eating vegetables this fresh is very gratifying to the body.  You get to eat it right away, no waiting for it.  Your digestive systems loves the exercise raw vegetables bring.  All the way from the teeth in your mouth to your…  well you get the picture.  When your “systems” are doing the job they were designed for it makes them happy and healthy.  But if naked is not your thing, cook them, dress them up with sauces and let them accompany other items to be eaten.  Vegetables are pretty chill and get along nicely with other food stuffs.  Cooking vegetables does not negate the positive effects of the vegetable itself.

Vegetables are also kinder to mother earth and you can actually grow your own!  There is truly great joy in stepping out your back door to gather dinner for the evening.  You put a lot of love into growing the vegetable and now it will pay you back by loving your body.  It takes less of our earthly resources to grow a vegetable than it does to grow a cow or a pig.  I know it sounds like I am lobbying for the vegetable union, and I am, but if you ate mostly vegetables and saved the cows and pigs for special occasions, your body would thank you by behaving itself and keeping extra weight at bay.   Your wallet will thank you for keeping more dollars to spend on, oh, I don’t know, a new road bike?    And most likely when you do eat the cow, it will taste better.