The most nutritional vegetables
Long-time readers will recall that when I reviewed Gardening for Maximum Nutrition,
I was a bit dubious of the author's methodology in determining the most
nutritious vegetables. I was much more impressed by the Tennessee
Extension Service document entitled "Gardening for Nutrition" that Mom
gave me for my birthday, and I was also pleasantly surprised to see that
many of our own favorite vegetables received top billing therein. Based
on 100-gram samples, the top vegetables for providing vitamin A,
vitamin C, iron, calcium, and potassium were (in order of descending
quality):
- Kale (our winter staple, and an overall best vegetable since it
ranks among the top four vegetables for all five nutrients measured)
- Spinach (tops the charts for potassium)
- Mustard
- Turnip greens (top the charts for calcium)
- Broccoli (our fall and spring staple that's high in vitamin C and in the top 15 for all five nutrients)
- Butternut squash (so I'm not the only one who thinks this is the best winter squash! An excellent source of vitamin A and a good source of potassium)
- Lima beans (top the charts for iron, but the nutrient is in a form
not readily absorbed by the human body, so take that with a grain of
salt)
- Hot peppers (top the charts for vitamin C, but how many can you really eat? (No, don't answer that, Joey.))
- Leaf lettuce (faring dramatically better than head lettuce, it's a particularly good source of iron and calcium)
- Okra
- English peas
- Snow peas
- Cauliflower (interesting --- I don't grow cauliflower because its whiteness always made me think it wasn't as good for me. And I guess it does trail its cousin broccoli by a pretty wide margin.)
- Collards (my least favorite leafy green. Coincidence?)
- Southern peas
- Asparagus
- Carrots (top the charts for most vitamin A per pound)
- Acorn squash
- Pumpkin (see why we grow butternuts instead?)
- Chinese cabbage
- Sweet potatoes
- Cabbage
- Snap beans
- Sweet peppers (after hot peppers, sweet peppers top the charts for most vitamin C per pound)
- Kohlrabi
- Cantaloupe (I guess the study's authors went by family for their "vegetables" and included cantaloupes because they're cucurbits?)
- Hubbard squash
- Irish potatoes
- Beets
- Tomatoes
- Eggplant
- Zucchini
- Crookneck squash
- Radish
- Turnip roots
- Scallop squash
- Head lettuce
- Corn
- Onions
- Watermelon
- Cucumbers
So now you know what you
should be growing (and training your family to eat) if you want to live
long and prosper! Plant some kale!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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comment 1
Rating veggies for nutritional content is like rating wood screws for flavor. As this site http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2461/2 shows, kale, your #1, is very good for A & C, but almost useless (<10% of MDR) for everything else. Hunt around that site (or any other that you prefer) and compare any veggie to beef: you'll see there's no comparison. One should eat veggies only as a source of carbs, as a minor source of supplements to meat and for their esoteric appeal. Beef should be what's for dinner.
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doc
— Thu Dec 25 05:35:31 2014
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