Vitality From Vegetables

Hokitika Guardian, 25 May 1921, Page 3

Vitality From Vegetables

(By Walter M. Gallighan, the wellknown Food Authority). Everyone who owns a garden can raise green vegetables with little cost in cash and much profit to health. Fresh green vegetables, either raw in the form of salads or steamed till tender, should be eaten every day, and especially at this time of the year. Cabbage of the green variety contains a little more than 1 per cent, of protein or body-buliiding material, a bare fraction of fat, and about 4 per cent, of starch or carbo-hydrate. ‘ The food value of garden greens is higher than that of salads, but none of the green vegetables can be regarded as nourishing foods. Curly kale and turnip tops contain rather less water than Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. Spinach when cooked has about US per cent, of water. The food value of kale is considerably higher than that of spinach or sprouts. In kale there is more carbo-hydrate than in cauliflower. «***-*

It will be seen, then, that the “greens” are the most economical and wholesome of the cabbage family. The anti-scorbutic value of green leaves has been long recognised. Cabbage contains very necessary alkaline salts that counteract acidity. These salts are a preventive of eczema, and other skin diseases. Gouty persons should never neglect green vegetables. The mineral matter in greens is ehielJv potassium. There is a fairly high percentage of iron in spinach. Vegetables are less easily 'digested than meat, and for this reason cabbage should not be allowed to grow old and woody. It is the woody fibre in green vegetables than so often causes indigestion symptoms. A small young cabbage is far more valuable than an old big one with a hard heart. Young greens fresh from the ground, well steamed, and slowly and thoroughly chewed, can lie eaten with benefit hv almost anybody. Among vegetables of the cabbage .specie? cauliflower is probably the most readily digested.

There would'be less gout, gravel, eczema, and scurvy if a greater use was made of’ the alkaline properties in ordinary green vegetables. Most people neglect this natural corrective to acidity . Uncooked green leaves, lettuce, endive, watercress, and garden cress arc all useful blood purifiers and should be eaten all the year round. Not enough use is made of the hardy winter lettuces and endive. There is no time of the year when green vegetables are quite unobtainable, but in winter they are sometimes scarce and dear.