Nutritive value of vegetables

To me the main reason for growing my own vegetables is to provide healthier produce than I can buy from local food sources. But, what vegetables should I grow? Ive never seen anything like the information T&M is offering now at their website:
http://seeds.thompson-morgan.com/us/en/nutrition

Dr. Lol Trueman is a microbiologist. Here he presents a whole course in nutrition that can readily be used for planning a vegetable garden. May your next vegetable garden bring you better health than ever!

Excellent information on nutrition.

Thank you for the link!!
LarryD

Gloria, thanks for the interesting link. One thing to keep in mind is that heirloom varieties that have been grown for flavour tend to be higher in nutrition than many of the newer hybrids. The hybrids that were created for increased productivity or ease of cultivation often produce lower brix plants (lower in nutrition) under that same growing conditions as the older heirloom varieties.

In terms of what to grow, what vegetables do you like to eat, and what style of cuisine do you prefer? For example, if you like Italian food, try growing a variety of traditional Italian vegetables and branch out from there.
From a nutritional standpoint, you would want to grow a variety of vegetables that includes leafy greens, stalk vegetables, root vegetables and "fruit" or "colour" vegetables, meaning a vegetable that is the fruit of the plant like squash, eggplant, peppers etc.

There are six tastes that are required at each meal to satisfy the nutritional needs of the body: sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter & astrigent. If you eat a variety of vegetables in a mix of colours (green, yellow, orange, red) you will increase the nutrients available.

Please keep us posted on what you decide to grow.

Garden Mermaid: I used to live in Sunnyvale, many years ago. The predicted temperature for here is 20 degrees tonight. I hope you are enjoying California sunshine. After reading the nutritive value of radishes on T&M, I think I could practically live on radish sandwiches with all the green tea I drink! I also checked out some the articles by Eliot Coleman. I am thinking about trying a winter garden under row cover and plastic for radish, tatsoi, spinach. Kale, and cabbage are still available here in packs. Not at the below freezing temps we've been having though. I guess my purple carrots will have to wait. I like asian vegetables, but I notice there are a lot of Italian ones showing up now. They might be more adaptable to the hot summers we have been getting.
Your recipe for "tastes" sounds like what we used to call macrobiotics.

Gloria, you would be surprised at the weather we are having in Sunnyvale these days. My garden bed is covered with a combination of floating row cover fleece and 6 mil plastic, sort of like a mini-green house a la Eliot Coleman. The thermometer is showing that the temperature has been dropping to 26 degrees INSIDE the cover!!! Definitely not the typical weather for this area. It's been below freezing at night for almost a week!

Tonight we harvested a large batch of Flash Collards. The cabbage family gets sweeter in the cold weather. I can't wait for the brussel sprouts to start forming. My beets, brocollo, savoy cabbage, chard, mache and salad greens are all doing well. The fava beans are taking their sweet time to sprout. The sugar snap peas are up, but growing in slow motion due to the unseasonable cold. The parsnips have sprouted quickly. I'm experimenting this season to see if the plastic cover will keep the heavy rains from drowning my winter crop and extend my growing season. I didn't want to wait until spring to plant the parsnips.

The concept of the six tastes comes from Ayurvedic medicine. There is some overlap with TCM since the Buddha brought Ayurveda to China, where it was incorporated with the local healing traditions.

Garden Mermaid: Wow, I envy your winter harvest. I hope I will be there at that level of production by next winter. I am building beds now (based on rabbit poop, timothy hay, and green tea which I drink by the gallon). I have been a vegetarian for years and years, but I find I need a tune up periodically. Finally, I have retired and I am on 2.5+ acres. Dreams what to do with it. The reality is invasive plants. And not as tough as I once was, and there is no help except for my 2 dogs (moral support) and Henry, my New Zealand rabbit who makes a real contribution!
Sounds like your weather is doing to you, the same as what we are getting here.
I am in Zone 8. Where can I learn more about the six tastes?

Gloria, What Dr. Trueman does not dwell on is the overall benefits of growing your own vegetables in your own garden. When YOU take the time to grow your own, you can decide for yourself what to grow. By that, I mean YOU decide what vegies you like. And YOU decide how to grow them (organic or w/pesticides). And YOU must adapt your likes to the environment you have to live with. As for growing a well-balanced nutritional garden, that should not be terribly high on your priority list. In fact, a well diversified garden of summer veggies, followed by a diversified cool weather crop will far outweigh the nutritional value of a can of cut green beens or a handful of limp radishes from your local supermarket.
The big farmers, the commercial growers, do not grow their crops for their nutritional values. They grow varieties that ship well. That is their primary concern. For instance, tomatoes grown in California and shipped accross country have skins that are as tough as leather and they have no taste. BUT THEY SHIP WELL!
Do those wonderfully great shipping tomatoes have any nutritional value? Of course they do. Does their lack of taste equate to less nutritional value? Probably not. If they did, I suspect the FDA would be on top of them like white on rice.
What you gain by growing your own should not be overshadowed by your desire to obtain the best possible nutritional benefits. Virtually everything that you grow in your own backyard garden will be healthier for you than anything you will ever find in the supermarket.
If you have a particular nutrient that you feel is more essential to your diet, it is easy enough to grow the veggie that is high in that nutrient. For instance, carrots are high in beta-carrotene. If that is what you think you need more of, then grow enough carrots so that you can have scrambled carrots for breakfast, carrot sandwiches for lunch, a carrot soufle for dinner, and a carrot cake for desert. Will you overdose on beta-carrotene? You might turn orange, but you won't overdose :-).
And frankly, it just isn't necessary. Since you live here in the deep south, there are very few veggies that you cannot successfully grow. You have two full growing seasons. Just plant what you like to eat. Tomatoes, peppers, okra, corn, cantaloupe, cucumber, etc. in the summer. And green onions, kale or collards, carrots, snap peas, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc., in the fall. With such a huge variety in a 9-10 month growing season, you ain't gonna come down with a case of the rickets! And you will not suffer from ANY vitamin deficiency.
In fact, your overall health will be much greater than one who only eats veggies from a can or from the produce section of the local grocery store.

I love growing my own veggies! This time of year is quite slim with only chard, kale, peas, and leeks along with peppers in the greenhouse. I try to use frozen or preserved veg along with fresh veg from the garden, but I saw 2 cauliflowers in the supermarket on offer, and (big mistake) bought them!!! After my own grown caulis these poor watery tasting cauliflowers were extremely disappointing, I can’t believe the difference between shop bought and home grown!!

Actually, the lack of taste DOES equate to lack of nutrients in fruits and vegetables. The FDA is in the pocket of the pharma companies and lost its integrity decades ago. If you can buy locally grown produce at a farmer's market, you will proably be able to get the varieties that don't ship well and have more taste and nutrition. Growing your own will make them even fresher.

We have 2 health food shops that sell organic fruit and veg (no farmers market), the only problem is you pay double for organic!!

As a vegetarian and diabetic and someone who has been hospitalized recently for a nutrient deficiency (in spite of an above average focus on a healthy diet), I am interested in the nutritive value of the vegetables I grow. I think T&M has done a great service for gardeners, by having Dr. Trueman delineate the nutrients and which vegetables they are in. Over the last 20 - 30 years I have watched the field of nutrition change. Even the concept of "antioxidant" is a relatively new one. Dr. Trueman presents a state of the art concept of nutrition that I haven't seen before, at least made in such an intelligent concise way. And he relates it to growing the seeds that T & M sells. I think that is an innovation. I didn't think anyone ever said that a nutritional chart should have priority over anything, to the exclusion of other reasons for growing your own. But, it I think it should be one consideration. Especially, for people who are in a very precarious nutritional state, such as myself and some 10 million other diabetics in this country. And, to me it is a lot more useful than just telling your children, "eat your vegetables".

Incidently, here there are no health food stores, no farmers market, and this August all of the tomatoes in the supermarket were from Brazil. Local supermarkets are very limited in what they sell and the quality is not good.

Gloria, In light of your disclosure that you have recently been hospitalized for a nutrient defiency, it is clearly more important for you to address your own specific deficiency. Has your doctor not pointed you in the right direction? If so, then it would obviously be smart to follow his recommendations to do whatever is necessary to offset that deficiency. Even take pill-sized supplements if that is what it takes. First things first.
Once there, a garden planted with a variety of veggies with natural "anti-oxidants" can only enhance your health. But if you would like a list of veggies that are highest in their anti-oxidant properties, please visit this website. It is hosted by Reader's Digest, http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=16245.
You can be healthier than you are, and a backyard garden is a huge first step.

Gloria, so sorry to hear that there are no farmer's markets in your area. It makes me ill just to think about eating supermarket produce. Here is a link to the Alabama Farmers Market Authority. Perhaps you can find a market in a nearby town, or better yet, encourage them to open one near you:
http://tinyurl.com/yew6v4

Here's a link to the Alabama Local Harvest site.
http://tinyurl.com/yhtsfu

You may want to think about getting a refractometer from ebay and start measuring the brix of your produce as you grow it to ensure that the nutrient content is high. Also check out the raising brix thread on the Organic Gardening forum which will provide more links to information on how to grow nutrient dense food.
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/644208/

Click on the "read more" link on the "food nutrition has been declining" article to learn more about the effects of industrial agriculture at the Nutrition Security Institute site: http://www.nutritionsecurity.org/index.html

I found the following sites helpful in using nutrition to correct my blood sugar. You may find them interesting as well:
http://www.beanpodtea.com/
http://www.ener-chi.com/more_d.htm

Please do keep us posted on your garden as it grows!

Gloria, My apologies for sending you to a hyperlink that probably has hundreds of pages you can access. The hyperlink just accessed the Readers Digest home page rather than the specific page with the good info. So I copied and pasted that page. It was the only way I could figure out how to send the info to you.




Top 10 Antioxidant-Rich Fruits and Veggies
Move this antioxidant-rich produce to the top of your shopping list.
From Cut Your Cholesterol



Which fruits and veggies pack the most powerful antioxidant punch?



Researchers at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University figured it out by measuring various fruits and vegetables for their ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity), a fancy way of saying their antioxidant power. Here are the top 10 performers in each category:

Fruits
1. Prunes
2. Raisins
3. Blueberries
4. Blackberries
5. Strawberries
6. Raspberries
7. Plums
8. Oranges
9. Red grapes
10. Cherries


Vegetables
1. Kale
2. Spinach
3. Brussels sprouts
4. Alfalfa sprouts
5. Broccoli flowers
6. Beets
7. Red bell peppers
8. Onions
9. Corn
10. Eggplant


Last Updated: 2005-08-17

Sometimes hyperlinks don't always work the way we hope. In this case the info I found could not be hyperlinked as I intended. But if you doubt the validity of the above info, you can go to google and type in "antioxidant veggies", and then click on the 5th listed site, titled "Top 10 Antioxidant-Rich Fruits and Veggies". Hope this helps. Sorry about the inconvenience.

blmlb, you might want to try the TinyUrl site to convert the links. I've usually found that when a pasted link doesn't work correctly, it's because it is too long. Tiny Url will convert it to a shorter link that the DG forum can handle.

http://tinyurl.com/

blmlb: What I liked about the T&M discussion, is the role of other nutrients, in addition to antioxidants, in supporting cell health.

I am a relatively healthy person, and I love vegetables, particularly fresh ones, but I don't necessarily get my 5 per day. Reading Dr. Trueman's article was fascinating. Though I had heard some of it before, plenty of it was new. I checked out some of what he said on internet nutrition web sites and found it to be recently learned well accepted science -- not airy-fairy stuff.
T&M has done us all a wonderful favor. My thanks to them!