Vegetables are in all the health supporting eating styles....

Today's Post: Thursday, 3-31-2011

The Mediterranean Diet, the DASH II Diet, health-supporting vegan diets, partially vegarian diets such as lacto-ovo vegetarian, and diets that include meat that also result in good health are the health supporting and health creating and protecting ways of eating.

They all have vegetables and mostly nonstarchy vegetables in common. In fact, within each kind, the people who eat the most vegetables tend to have the best health.

Cruciferous vegetables and the onion and garlic family of vegetables, the vegetables with carotenes, greens, and other nonstarchy vegetables have multiple health benefits.

They prevent cancers and tend to prevent obesity due to have a lot of water and fiber and nutrients and few calories. People who eat the most vegetables tend to have the most alpha carotene in their bodies. A recent study found that people who have high blood levels of alpha carotene have better overall health and a lower death rate than people who don’t.

The DASH II diet capitalizes on the ability of vegetables to reverse and prevent excess body fat and their high amounts of potassium to lower or prevent high blood pressure.

The Mediterranean Diet produces good health in part because it uses extra virgin olive oil instead of the inflammatory omega 6 oils such as soy and corn oil -- and instead of fatty meats and dairy fat which in excess tend to cause heart disease. It produces good health in part because it includes red wine, garlic, and seafood. But, even with the Mediterranean Diet, those that eat more vegetables and less refined grain foods are healthier.

Vegan vegetarians who take supplements of the nutrients missing in that diet such as B12, zinc (& the amount of copper to balance that zinc), and some iron AND who eat plenty of vegetables and tend to eat more nuts, beans and lentils, and traditional soy products such as tofu instead of isolated soy protein foods and grains tend to have the best health. (It can also help for them to eat quinoa which has a more complete amino acid profile and eat a variety of vegetable protein sources or take hemp based protein supplements.)

Lacto ovo vegetarians who take zinc (& the amount of copper to balance that zinc) and who eat whole eggs or egg yolks) AND who eat plenty of vegetables and tend to eat more nuts, beans and lentils, and traditional soy products such as tofu instead of isolated soy protein foods and grains tend to have the best health. (Egg yolks are high in B vitamins, quality protein, and have bioavailable iron.)

People who eat meat in a healthful way and eat an abundance of several kinds of vegetables can also have good health. It helps if they follow a Mediterranean or DASH II diet with plenty of vegetables other wise. It helps if they only eat meat on some days instead of several times a day. And, it helps a very large amount if they only eat meat from animals fed only grass or only eat the very leanest and most fat trimmed of the meat from gain fed animals.

Each of these eating styles produces good health.

But they are all mostly vegetarian with stylistic variations. And, the more actual vegetables they contain and the more variety of them they eat each week, the healthier they tend to be!

Note that you can add extra virgin olive oil, spices, garlic or onions or both, or tomato sauce or nuts or cheese to vegetables to add more taste and variety of tastes.

And, not that if you are short the prep time many vegetables need, pureed vegetables such as those found in baby foods and the unsweetened pumpkin puree I’ve started eating work well. Also you can use a blender to make vegetable juices or pureed vegetables yourself. Any good blender works and if you want super pureed and can afford it, the VitaMix blender works well.

You can also buy tomato juice and V8 juice.