HOW TO GET MORE GREENS IN YOUR DIET

WHAT EXACTLY ARE “GREENS”?

When people talk about greens,they talk about two different categories of greens: cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, sprouts, kale, collard greens, cabbage and spring greens or leafy greens, which includes lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard.

The “greens” category includes also Spirulina, a type of blue green algae, that has a wide variety of essential vitamins and minerals.Beans and shoots are missing in the “greens” category. They are not from the same family of plants as the cruciferous and leafy greens, which do to a large extent have some cross over with each other (Spirulina being an obvious exception!) and often share comparable nutritional qualities for that reason.

Peas and beans are full of essential nutrients and they shouldn’t be ignored. They also tend to be higher in calories due to their carbohydrate content.

VITAMINS AND MINERALS

Greens contain high levels of Vitamin A and K with spinach, broccoli and kale, amongst others, easily surpassing our daily requirements.

Salmon is rich in essential in omega 3 fatty acids. This is amplified further using this score, because it also contains more calories, which is always going to be the case especially with fatty foods even if they contain essential fat soluble, essential vitamins that we can’t get from vegetables.

For many people eating greens is a challenge. They either dislike the slightly bitter taste, or are quite often focused on other things nutritionally to bother thinking about adding in greens to their meals.

HOW TO INCLUDE MORE GREENS IN YOUR DIET

There are ways to make sure we eat enough greens.You need to buy frozen greens. his will mean no preparation time, no food wastage, and can be cooked in the microwave in seconds or simply thrown into dishes we are already cooking without any effort.

The Greens can be added to shakes and smoothies. These either have powdered forms of some of the more nutrient dense greens such as Spirulina, Broccoli and Spinach or they combine many different sources of greens to gain all their nutrient benefits.