Do you want to protect yourself from getting cancer, diabetes, and improve your overall health? Super foods such as cabbage, coconut water and whole grains are excellent foods to introduce to your diet today.
Our first super food is CABBAGE. One cup of cabbage has 22 calories and many valuable nutrients. It contains sulforaphane which helps reduce the risk of cancer, and it also has more vitamin C than oranges. Because of the high amount of vitamin C it is one of the best antioxidants which help reduce free radicals that cause aging. It also contains vitamin E which aids in healthy hair, skin and eyes. Here is a quick list of some of the other amazing thing cabbage has to offer : high in sulfur, it's a great detoxifier to purify the blood; high in fiber, it aids in the treatment of constipation; it has amazing fat burning properties, and helps with eczema, jaundice, rheumatism, arthritis, gout and Alzheimer's disease. It’s also great for any weight loss regimen since it only has 22 calories per serving!
COCONUT WATER is more than just an ingredient in a piña colada. It also has more vitamin C than orange juice and is 99% fat free. It helps regulate body temperature, carries nutrients and oxygen to the body’s cells, raises your metabolism to burn fat, boosts the immune system, cleans the digestive tract, controls diabetes, and treats kidney and urethral stones. It also helps balance the body’s PH and helps reduce the risk of cancer, and it’s an isotonic beverage that naturally rehydrates. The most amazing thing about coconut water is that in some countries it is considered a universal blood replacement since it shares many of the properties of human blood plasma! It also contains lauric acid. The only other source of lauric acid is breast milk, which some researchers believe is responsible for the low incidence of viral and other infections in babies.
WHEAT BREAD and other sources of whole grains like wild rice, cereal, whole wheat pasta, buckwheat, and oats. Whenever you eat oatmeal, popcorn and buckwheat pancakes you are getting a serving of the benefits of whole grains, some of which include reduced risk of coronary heart disease, constipation, diverticulosis. Many processed whole grain products on the shelves at the grocery store are fortified with vitamin B which helps in the formation of red blood cells and folate which reduces the risk of spina bifida, anencephaly and neural tube defects during pregnancy.
A less familiar source of whole grain is spelt. Spelt is an ancient grain which offers more nutrients than its more common cousin, the wheat hybrid, the first of which were developed in the early 1800’s. Some of the benefits of spelt are that it helps people with migraine headaches, atherosclerosis or diabetes because of its combination of vitamin B2, manganese, thiamine, niacin and copper. It has also been shown to help prevent gallstones in women, according to the American Journal of Gastroenterology, and it doesn’t seem to bother people who are allergic to wheat.
One of the best sources of the benefits of whole grains is not really a grain at all, but a seed! Quinoa (pronounced “keen-wah”) is called a pseudo-cereal because it isn’t a member of the grass family. It’s more closely related to beets and spinach, but it has many of nutrients of whole grains plus a few that the other grains do not. For example, Quinoa is very high in protein, and like oats but not wheat or rice, it has a full set of the amino acids necessary for human health.
So try these foods today and start improving your. Try some stir fry cabbage, pick up a can of coconut water, or eat more whole grain. Your body will love you from the inside out!
Links to the sources of some of the information in the above article:
US Dept of Agriculture:
The World’s Healthiest Foods:
Oxford Journals
Journal of Heredity, Vol. 46, Issue 2, pp. 81-83):
Some recipes for quinoa, spelt, and other foods in the article:
