Spinach in a Healthy Diet

By Randy Sky - 2007-07-04 - Viewed 1570 times. Find more articles like this in our Nutrition and Healthy Eating category.

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Spinach has been known to be a great addition to a healthy diet by nutritional experts and parents alike.

So much that many people refer to spinach as a Super Food.

Do you remember your mom talking about Popeye and his love for spinach? There was a good reason why your mother pushed you to eat this healthy vegetable.

There is a great deal of beta carotene, vitamin C and calcium in spinach. The vegetable is also amazingly high in iron and many experts feel that it should be a component of the diets of just about everyone at any age.

Spinach Benefits

Another of the benefits of eating spinach as part of your healthy diet is that it contains a lot of insoluble fiber in it. Many of us in the West don't have much of this type of fiber in our diets which leads to increased numbers of people with stomach illnesses, colon problems and certain cancerous conditions.

In addition, this insoluble fiber is known to be cardioprotective, meaning that it helps the heart and other related organs. Besides being a good vegetable for heart disease, the vegetable is also believed to do a good job in fighting cancer. It is the fiber and other nutrients in the spinach leaf that is believed to protect a person from things like lung and breast cancer.

Cancer fighting properties

Spinach is extremely high in vitamin E, an antioxidant that is known to prevent and combat cancer. Antioxidants like vitamin E take care of oxygen free radicals inside cells that can do damage to cellular DNA and other parts of the cell. It is this damage that leads to cancer.

It has been discovered that spinach contains a wealth of zeaxanthin and lutein. These are carotenoids related to beta carotene and are also wonderful antioxidants, so that they also protect our cells from oxygen free radicals and cancer formation.

Looking for Spinach

There is spinach available at just about any supermarket or grocery store and it costs very little. Almost all year round, you should be able to find fresh spinach to make into a salad or add to dips and soups. In fact, fresh spinach is cheaper than most other vegetables or fruits. You can even easily grow spinach in your garden. This is one of the best sources of fresh spinach you can get.

When choosing spinach at the store, you need to look for the leaves that are the most green and crisp looking. You must also not overcook your spinach because the increased heat will destroy many of its valuable nutrients. Spinach is such a valuable nutrient, it's a wonder that more individuals do not use it as part of their healthy diet.

Spinach is one of those vegetables that you can use in just about anything from soups to fresh spinach salads, as a side dish and in dips as a snack. It has such a good reputation that everyone should consider taking it up as part of your healthy diet.

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