VEGETABLES EVERY DAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 895, 28 September 1956, Page 16

VEGETABLES EVERY DAY

This is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from ZB, YA and

YZ stations of the NZBS by Dr.

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy Director- General

of Health

OU should be very busy in your vegetable garden at this time of the year. You need to be, because vegetables are not cheap, and a combination of bought and home-grown is easier on the pocket, because those you grow avoid shop storage and consequent loss in nutritive value; and because you should have vegetables every day in your diet. Now I don’t want you to boost vegetables unduly, thinking, for example, if you eat your "vegies" you will be all right. Vegetarians do this. They get by, particularly if they eat milk or eggs, but true vegetarians who eat nothing of animal origin, do suffer in the long run. Their adolescent children cannot get all growth requirements, and end up as adults an average 20 pounds less in weight and shorter in height than those who eat meat or milk and eggs. In true vegetarians of long standing, troubles develop in proportion, such as sore tongues, painful spines and backs, and vitamin B12 deficiency-this more marked in children. What I want you to do is to take a sane view. Don’t stand over your children till they eat their "vegies," nor promise something if vegetables are eaten. But do cook some vegetables every day, so that you have one section right in the balanced diet. Vegetables are no

more important than the milk, cheese, eggs, meat, bread and butter, cereals and fruit, which make up a good mixed diet. Now, having vegetables in the right perspective, what is your daily guide about them? For good health, your family needs every day some potato orf kumara, and ie eo te

at least one serving of another vegetable. You will get by with this minimum, only if some fruit, preferably raw, is also eaten. To make this easier count tomato as a fruit. Often times fruit is too dear for daily eating. On fruitless days, increase the vegetables. The prescription will therefore read, on such days, a helping of potato or kumara, and servings of at least two other vegetables. If you have both potato and kumara, no counting of these as two kinds! If you do serve these together, two other kinds of vegetables will be needed on fruitless days. Potato or kumafa are not fattening in reasonable amounts. A good reducing diet always has a daily serving of potato. They ate good energy foods, and good health foods because they give us vitamin C and iron, and vitamin BI, too. Of course, you can throw away a lot of this health-giving feature by thick peeling, by soaking them in water after peeling, by not putting them to boil in already boiling, already salted water, by not having the pot lid on tightly, or by

keeping them warm after draining a long while on top of the stove or in the oven. If you do these sort of things to potatoes (or any other vegetables, as a matter of fact) you lose such a lot of nutritive value. Peeling a potato thickly can cause a loss of at, least half its iron content. The answer-bake them in their skins occasionally. Now for vegetables other than potato or kumara. Your own personal preferences come into this and, of course, what your greengrocer has to sell, or your garden to supply. From the nutritional point of view, green vegetables are most valuable for their vitamin C content, so have these frequently in your weekly eating. They are the green vegetables, cauliflower-and swedes. Nowadays you are often rocked at the price of cauliflowers, or even the humble cabbage, but you have alternatives in silver beet, spinach and swedes, That vegetable so despised in many homes, the swede, is maligned. It is a good vitamin C vegetable, able to save your pocket when greens are too dear, without nutritive disadvantage. To the high vitamin .C group-greens, cauliflowers, swedesyou may add tomatoes, if you are treat- ing them as vegetables. Remember "deep freeze" vegetables when shopping. They may be richer in vitamin C than those in greengrocers’ shops, because for freezing only the freshest vegetables can be used, and the freezing process doesn’t materially alter the nutritive value of foods. Probably, too, you are more careful in cooking frozen vegetables than fresh, because the frozen so easily lose flavour if overcooked.. Cauned vegetables may also have mére vitamin C than similar vegetables kept a long while in shops. Remember canned tomatoes when other vegetables seem stale in the greengrocer’s, and fall back on the swede when stuck. Don’t make a fetish of vegetables, but use them sensibly each day.