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Salad and Raw Vegetables
WLR dietitian, Juliette Kellow, BSc RD, talks about a new
study which highlights the importance of eating healthily. By
making salads and eating raw vegetables the study showed the
increase in better intakes of essential vitamins and minerals in
the diet.
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Rabbit Food is Good for Us
By WLR Dietitian
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It’s official! Just in case you were in any doubt, a new
study from America has proven that salad and raw vegetables are
good for us!
The research, published in the Journal of the American
Dietetic Association, looked at nutrition data for more than
17,500 men and women and discovered that eating salads and raw
vegetables was linked to better intakes of vitamins C and E,
folic acid (a B vitamin) and antioxidant nutrients, such as
lycopene and beta-carotene.
Lenore Arab, co-author of the study said, “The findings
endorse consumption of salad and raw vegetables as an effective
strategy for increasing uptake of important nutrients. Our
findings suggest that eating just one serving of salad or raw
vegetables a day significantly boosts the likelihood of meeting
the recommended daily intake of certain nutrients.”
WLR says:
It’s not the most earth-shattering piece of research to be
carried out, but it’s sometimes good to go back to basics and
remind ourselves how eating well helps to keep us healthy.
Benefits of Healthy Eating:
It’s not just the vitamins in salad and raw vegetables that
make them so important – they’re also packed with fibre and are
low in fat and calories, making them great choices for filling
you up while slimming.
Salad also counts towards the recommended five daily servings
of fruit and veg – and you don’t have to eat as much as you
might think. Just one tomato, a cereal bowl of mixed leaves, a
2-inch piece of cucumber, 3 sticks of celery or half a pepper
all count as one serving.
Ideas for salad and raw vegetables in the diet:
- Serve carrot and celery sticks, baby corn and strips of
pepper with reduced-fat hummus, salsa or tzatziki.
- Don’t just stick to lettuce, tomato and cucumber – add
peppers, radishes, celery, button mushrooms, grated carrot,
sweetcorn, mange tout, kidney beans, chick peas and spring
onions to salads to add different tastes, textures and
nutrients.
- Use different varieties of lettuce – in general, the
darker the leaf, the more nutrients it will contain. This
means oak leaf lettuce contains more nutrients than iceberg
lettuce. Try butterhead, romaine or cos (of which little gem
is a variety). You’ll also find oak leaf and lollo rosso in
most supermarkets.
- Add other leaves to your salad bowl. Rocket, spinach,
watercress, endive and radicchio will all add taste, texture
and various vitamins and minerals.
- You can completely change the flavour of salads by adding
different fresh herbs – try coriander, basil, mint, chives and
parsley.
- Stock up on a selection of reduced-fat salad dressings.
That way you can vary the ones you use from day to day so that
you’re less likely to get bored.
- Keep a carton of cherry tomatoes on your desk at work to
nibble on when hunger hits.
- Add sliced tomato to sandwiches, wraps or rolls or snacks
such as cheese or sardines on toast.
- Make your own tzatziki by adding finely diced or grated
cucumber to low-fat natural yoghurt, together with crushed
garlic, lemon juice and black pepper.
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