Mom always said to eat your vegetables and we all know how right she was. Renewed public interest in nutrition is vindicating moms who made us sit at the table until we stopped playing with our broccoli and finally ate it.
This post is dedicated to your heart. It’s the engine of your body, pumping oxygenated blood through your system and keeping the whole operation moving. That’s why it’s so important that we all endeavor to eat with heart health in mind.
We all have our favorite vegetables, so I’m going to share my favorite 4 green-colored vegetables to boost heart health.
1. Spears of delicious – Asparagus.
Green asparagus is a vegetable I can’t resist. Grilled and tossed in a salad, or served up next to a beautiful filet of fish, I can’t get enough of the stuff.
And these spears of delicious are mighty. Containing vitamin B6, they help you fight heart disease, because of B6’s war on homocysteine. This is an amino acid which has been linked to heart disease. So, no matter how you like your asparagus, you need to put it on the menu more often.
2. Lovely, leafy greens.
This is another one I crave. I’m especially partial to kale (with its numerous health benefits and robust flavor). And here’s the thing, the darker the shade, the more heart-healthy benefit you derive from leafy greens.
Packed with magnesium, women can fortify themselves against sudden heart failure by eating more of these. Stir fries and salads are even better when you include darker shades of leafy greens.
3. Broccoli is for grown ups.
We’re all adults here, so let’s embrace this versatile green vegetable as the heart health powerhouse it is. I may have played with it instead of eating it at 5, but I now indulge regularly, adding it to everything from roast dinners to stir fries. It makes a great snack, eaten raw.
Containing large amounts of Vitamin C, broccoli can protect you from all diseases of the heart, with the added benefit of helping you fight colds.
4. Ring my bell (pepper).
Bell peppers add crunch and texture to salads and are delicious stuffed with rice and other vegetables. Contrary to popular belief, all bell peppers start out green. As they ripen, their flavor and color evolve to yellow, orange and red. But it’s in its un-ripened state you’ll get the heart health boost offered by bell peppers.
Like my beloved asparagus, bell peppers contain a homocysteine-fighting agent in folate. Folate helps you keep heart disease at bay.
These 4 green-colored vegetables to boost heart health do a lot more for you than support the health of your heart. They offer you needed hydration, fiber, and other nutrients to keep you ticking along like a finely-tuned machine.
These are my personal favorites, but the world is full of healthy food alternatives that come to you just the way nature made them.
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