Vegetables: The heart and soul of the traditional Mediterranean diet

Do about a heady minestrone full of shiny Zucchini and carrots, green beans and pumpkin, fragrant garlic and onion and cabbage plump chips goes out to dinner? Or you may prefer a simple pizza topped with Ruby Red and mottled fresh basil tomato sauce? Perhaps the hearts of artichokes and tomatoes stuffed with chopped onion, cilantro and a rainbow of Bell Pepper chopped, Moroccan-style, are more your speed. Gazpacho of tomato and pepper cooled, anyone? A Greek Salad of Eggplant with tomato, red bell pepper and oregano. Or maybe just a simple antipasto does grilled vegetables, marinated olives and ratatouille?

Fresh and abundant in the Mediterranean region, vegetables and herbs give a traditional kitchen Mediterranean uch of its character and flavor, not to mention its beauty and vibrant colors. The traditional Mediterranean diet is heavy on vegetables, of course, is not surprising, taking into account the Mediterranean garden-friendly climate. Traditionally, many people in the Mediterranean makes your life in farmland. Others simply grew to feed their families.

What would vegetables without cooking Mediterranean classic? Eggplant parmesan cheese and Provencal vine tomatoes stuffed with leaves and spinach and cheese pie vegetables provide the people of the Mediterranean with variety, color and flavor without the high cost of meat-based meals. But vegetables, much more that it seems to offer low-cost meals for people eating in large quantities in the Mediterranean. Many of the benefits of the traditional Mediterranean diet is undoubtedly due to the high proportion of fresh vegetables.

Many studies have examined the protective effect of the consumption of vegetables-etable against certain chronic diseases. Some have found an inverse association between vegetable and fruit consumption and the risk of many types of cancer, especially cancer of the upper respiratory and digestive tract, lungs, stomach, pancreas, and cervix, and ovaries and colon cancers.

Could the consumption of vegetable in the Mediterranean be linked to lower rates of chronic disease? Mounts of evidence to support this theory, even if evidence does not directly involve the Mediterranean. You don't have much time, researchers Kristi Steinmetz, Ph.d., R.D. and John Potter, M.D., Ph.d., had collected more than two hundred people and animal studies that looked at the consumption of plant foods and cancer rates. In fact, it seems to be a food consumption of strong relationship between plant and cancer rates.

The researchers could only speculate that cancer can be a resulting disease a diet devoid of sufficient amounts of plant foods. Human bodies, are apparently able to maintain and even restore your health when plant foods make up the majority of the calories in the diet. But it is no surprise that people studying the State of health and cooking for people who live in the Mediterranean.

High vegetable consumption seems to have a profound effect on the appearance of other chronic diseases, not just cancer. The risk of heart disease, arthritis, degeneration macular (loss associated with the age of the view due to the progressive degenera­tion of the macula, part of the retina), cognitive impairment related to age (such as Alzheimer's disease and other forms of de­mentia) and other age-related health problems can be reduced as it increases the consumption of vegetables.

In addition to reducing the risk of chronic diseases, re­search suggests that once arises the chronic disease, certain components in vegetables can slow or even reverse the progression of the disease. This process takes place by of­fering perhaps a boost to the immune system, as well as help in the fight against free radicals damage cells. Ultimately, research on many fronts suggests that a diet focused on plant rich in vegetables as well as fruits and whole grains, can add quality and quantity at your age.

Questions and Answers about Vegetables found in the Mediterranean Diet

If allium compounds are destroyed in the cooking pro­cess, what is the best way to include them in the diet? Raw onions and garlic?

To many people, raw onions and garlic are too strongly flavored to be palatable when eaten alone. However, minced or even thinly sliced raw onions make an aromatic addition to a salad, and minced fresh garlic tastes great in an olive oil vinaigrette salad dressing. Raw chives are another delicious addition to salads and make a crunchy garnish to other foods, from the traditional cottage cheese to grain-based dishes and pasta dishes. When you do cook onions and gar­lic, try to cook them for as short a time as possible. When making soups and stews, sprinkle a few chopped onions on top, and/or add the garlic (or half the garlic) toward the end of the cooking time.

Are the familiar herbs and spices used in Mediterranean cuisine of any nutritional value, or are they purely for fla­voring?

Herbs and spices are plant foods and are rich with nutri­ents and phytochemicals, just like vegetables, although re­search hasn’t focused its attention on herbs and spices the way it has on vegetables (at least partially due to the fact that these plant foods are consumed in much smaller amounts and so may have a less potent, although quite possibly cumula­tive, effect). Some plant foods such as garlic are often thought to be either an herb or a vegetable, and the distinc­tion is indeed blurry at times. The dictionary even defines vegetables as “a usually herbaceous plant cultivated for its edible parts.” Herbs are, technically, plants with fleshy rather than woody stems, and are also defined as “aromatic plants used in medicine or as seasoning.” Similarly, spices are “aromatic  or pungent plant substances used as flavoring.”

Yes. Just as a raisin is as nutritious as a grape, the sun-dried tomato is full of lycopene and contains all the nutrients of a vine-ripe tomato. The only element missing is the water. The sun-dried tomato also contains the same number of calories as a fresh tomato. However, because it is smaller, it is easier to eat more sun-dried tomatoes than fresh tomatoes. Of course, the calories in vegetables are minimal and these are calories with nutritional power, so there’s no need to limit yourself. Sun-dried tomatoes make a flavorful addition to many dishes and are even a tasty addition to homemade bread.

Are frozen vegetables as nutritious as fresh vegetables?

Not always, but sometimes the frozen version of your fa­vorite veggie is actually more nutritious than the fresh ver­sion. Many vegetables are flash-frozen and bagged right in the field after picking, preserving many nutrients that might otherwise be destroyed by rough handling and extreme tem­peratures, not to mention too-long exposure to the air during the long transport to your local supermarket and finally to your refrigerator. Some nutrients are easily oxidized and de­pleted during this trek.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t seek out fresh produce! Seek out local produce stands or, better yet, grow your own vegetables. The trip from garden to dinner plate is much shorter, and you’ll be getting the best flavor and most nutri­tional value possible. When good fresh produce isn’t avail­able, however, you can rest assured that frozen and canned vegetables are a pretty close second when it comes to nutri­tional value. Be aware, however, that sodium may be added to frozen and canned vegetables. Briefly rinse these vegeta­bles with water before preparing to wash away the excess, should you be salt-sensitive or if your recipe doesn’t call for extra salt.

How much folacin is in different kinds of foods?

Many kinds of beans, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts, and seeds contain folacin. All of these foods are rec­ommended to be consumed on a daily basis in the Mediter­ranean Diet Pyramid, making it easy to get adequate amounts of folacin. The recommended daily allowance for the average adult is 180 to 200 micrograms. Women in childbearing years, and those who are pregnant, are recom­mended to get 400 micrograms of folacin per day. Some re­searchers feel that folacin intakes should be from 400 to 800 micrograms per day to help prevent cancer. Below is a chart of some foods and their folacin content:

Food                                                         Folacin (micrograms)

Artichoke,

boiled (1 medium)                                             155

Asparagus,

boiled (1/2 cup, or 6 spears)                             130

Avocado,

raw (1 medium)                                                  160

Blackberries

(frozen, unsweetened, 1 cup)                             50

Boysenberries

(frozen, unsweetened, 1 cup)                             85

Broccoli,

raw (1/2 cup chopped)                                          30

Chickpeas (garbanzo beans),

boiled (1 cup)                                                     280

Orange juice

(8 ounces)                                                           110

Red kidney beans,

boiled (1 cup)                                                     230

Note: These figures are rounded numbers. Source: Jean Penning­ton, Bowes & Churches, Food Values of Portions Commonly Used (17 ed), Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1998.

Eat Fruits and Vegetables to Save Your Brain

Save Your Brain: Eat Fruits and Vegetables

Where do you get the antioxidants that fight off the free radicals that would destroy your brain? Nature provided an army of antioxidants in the food supply. Fruits and veg­etables are full of antioxidants, including vitamins and other more exotic chemicals called carotenoids and polyphenols. The evidence is overwhelming that eating antioxidant-packed fruits and vegetables and/or taking antioxidant vitamins can protect against free-radical dam­age and consequent death and disease., People who eat the most fruits and vegetables generally have the lowest rates of cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and premature death.

For example, it’s well established that high consumption of fruits and veg­etables can slash your risk of developing various cancers in half! Most scientists believe fruits and vegetables con­vey antioxidant activity that curbs cancer- and disease-inciting damage from free radicals.

Antioxidants, in a word, can slow the aging process of the entire body, and are particularly needed in the brain.

Only in the last ten years have scientists dissected fruits and vegetables in search of the magic chemicals (in addi­tion to vitamins and minerals) that account for their mon­umental antioxidant activity. Many strong antioxidants have been identified. Among the so-called carotenoids are beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, lycopene, lutein, and xeazanthin. A huge family of some four thousand antioxidants known as flavonoids is concentrated in deeply colored fruits and vegetables and considered mainly responsible for their antioxidant activity.

Pioneering scientists at the U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland, have analyzed many foods to find and quantify specific exotic antioxidants, such as lycopene in tomatoes and lutein in green leafy veg­etables. So it’s now possible to know how much of these powerful carotenoids is contained in which plant foods.

But in a ground-breaking step, agriculture researchers at Tufts University in Boston have developed a method of analyzing each food, not for its individual component antioxidants, but for its overall “antioxidant capacity.” After blending up three samples of a specific food, such as spinach or strawberries from the supermarket, researchers put the pulp and extract through a “high performance liq­uid chromatograph”—a machine that analyzes how well and how quickly antioxidants in the sample food disarm free radicals, such as peroxyl and hydroxyl radicals, the type we make during normal metabolism.

This test, says its developer, USDA research scientist Guohua (Howard) Cao, measures all traditional antioxidants, such as vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, and glutathione, and reveals a food’s total antioxidant capacity, known as ORAC (oxygen radical absorbency capacity.) Thus, each food gets an ORAC score. An ORAC score signifies how well nature endowed that food with overall powers to neutralize cell-damaging free radicals. Highest are fruits and vegetables.

It’s no longer just how much antioxidant beta-carotene or lycopene or anthocyanins a food has. What really counts is the total antioxidant amount it provides.

At the top of the list of antioxidant powerhouses, as judged by the ORAC test: prunes, raisins, blueberries, black­berries, garlic, kale, cranberries, strawberries, spinach, raspberries—generally fruits and vegetables with the deep­est colors—as well as tea and red wine. Dr. Cao explains that the pigment itself is a potent antioxidant. Experts also know that the total antioxidant capacity of a food may be far greater than the sum of its individual antioxidant com­ponents. Fruits and vegetables contain a complex assort­ment of countless antioxidants that interact and potentiate each other, pushing their antioxidant powers far above their mere additive value. The ORAC test accounts for that syn­ergism.

The Best Brain-Saving Fruits and Vegetables

According to tests at Tufts University, here’s how fifty-three fruits and vegetables rank on antioxidant capacity (ORAC)—ability to fight off free radical chemicals that attack your brain cells.

SUPER ANTIOXIDANT FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

ORAC Units