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| "We are not having Jello with celery again. Mom's joking." |
I misspelled leafy greens simply because they are the least among the food groups and yet the most important in many ways.
People still joke about the traditional Midwestern salad - Jello, a sugar-based concoction enhanced with sweetened fruit. My mother added walnuts and celery for a more effective gag reflex. If we had reasonably fresh lettuce, I hid mine behind the breakfast room curtains.
I like Panera salads, but not restaurant salads drowning in a cup of dressing. I was genuinely shocked to learn in the Fuhrman books that leafy greens were powerfully nutritious and almost calorie free. One way to stop binge eating is to eat plenty of leafy greens, which can be satisfying and enjoyable. I did that fairly often with grocery store "fresh" spinach, which is not close to what I grew in Minnesota and Michigan.
I knew I had to eat more of those leafy greens but they held little attraction. First, I saw how inexpensive chopped, frozen greens were - and far more appetizing than canned greens of any kind. Could I blend them into the daily vegetable concoction warmed on the stove? Yes! - and they are not harmed by heat.
The prominent leafy greens in the frozen section are:
- Spinach
- Collards
- Turnip
- Kale.
Each one has special benefits without significant calories. They lack the massive amounts of sweeteners, fat, and salt that serve as the foundation of the American fast-food diet.
The nutritional benefits overlap, and they are well worth studying by searching "health benefits of" in the browser. Leafy greens suggest the reason why my vision improved and my arthritis went away (90%) in 2022.
