HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 69, 6 January 1947, Page 3

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

SALAD GREENS

(By the Department of Health)

These holiday times the harassed housewife has to plan well ahead to keep the larder well stocked. If the family go away camping or to the beach or other bach, she has to take and store much more than normal to keep the family going. Fresh vegetables are a problem. It is while they are fresh that they have the most Vitamin C. The longer you keep them the more the health giving matter fades into thin air. When you have to buy them and take them away to last over a holiday period, see that you minimise the loss. Keep vegetables in a cool place, keep them damp and lightly covered. Don’t pack them tightly or crush them either in transport or in storage. Crushing allows the oxygen of the air to do its thieving work and oxidise the Vitamin C, spiriting it away. So wrap very loosely, and don’t pile greens into

heaps. Cut surfaces also allow rapid oxidisation in either fruits or vegetables. Resist the temptation to prepare all vegetables early in the day. You lose too much of value. Any cutting, and particularly fine cutting and shredding of salad vegetables, speeds the disappearance of Vitamin C. The longer the cut surfaces are left to the air, the more the loss. Cutting up a salad with a steel knife a couple of hours before a meal means by meal time about twothirds of the Vitamin C content is gone.

Prepare your salad vegetables just before the meal. Wash them quickly and don’t soak them at all, for that is another way to lose the Vitamin. Cut the salad. Toss it together just before you call the others to the meal. Store your vegetables properly and prepare them this way, and you will get out of them every ounce of health possible for your family.