Thursday, March 6, 2008

Reminder to Me - Eat Your Greens

Do you have a hard time convincing people in your family that they won't die of protein deficiency (there really is no such thing) if they don't eat meat. I just read an excellent blog post about how veggie burgers have more nutrients then beef patties and how broccoli, kale, and romaine leave steak in the dust when it comes to nutrition. Take a look at the blog Disease Proof. You have to look at the second chart on the page. It is really impressive. It is an excellent reminder to me to keep putting kale in my smoothies, and steaming broccoli to serve with every meal.

And yes, I do need that reminder. I'll tell you what happened to me this winter. Most people who know me know I have come to eat salad as my main food. It has really helped my health and energy to do so. But something happened as the weather got colder, I started making other kinds of good food such as soups, lentils, rice, beans and other such things. They really are good food, but don't have near the nutrient content of greens. When I make these foods the main thing, I don't eat as many greens. A few weeks ago I remember congratulating myself that I must be doing much better health wise, because I was doing so well without as much salad. Then things started changing. I got some kind of intestinal flu, I ate something at a potluck that didn't agree with me very well, maybe msg, and had three nights of disturbed sleep. It is clear my digestion wasn't very happy either. Then two days ago I woke up with 3 cold sores on my lips. Though I used to get these quite regularly, I haven't had them at all since I started eating greens leafy vegetables regularly. I thought about it and wondered what was it causing all of this. I decided to check my acid/alkaline balance since I hadn't done that for a while. Oh my! The results were interesting. I've never come up so acid when testing myself. I had the strongest acid reading on the stick! No wonder I wasn't doing so well. I must get cold sores when I'm highly acid. How does one get their body back to alkaline? Eat greens, lemons and limes, and some other fruits and veggies. I think I learned a lesson here.

1 bouquets of wildflowers (Comment here):

Lisa said...

say it with me:
eat your greens, eat your greens, eat your greens.

and this coming from a converted junk-food junkie!