Turning over some new leaves - how eating more greens can protect your DNA
When I migrated to Australia, you could count on one hand the number of leafy green vegetables sitting on suburban greengrocers' shelves - cabbage, iceberg lettuce, silverbeet, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli. Now you'd need a couple of pairs of hands (and some help from your toes) to do the count: broccolini, spinach, watercress, rocket, half a dozen varieties of salad leaves and five or six kinds of Asian leafy greens and, now and again, a glimpse of the really dark stuff - deep green Tuscan cabbage.
For anyone who thinks they can't cook vegetables or that they're too fiddly to prepare, leafy greens are a no-brainer - no peeling, minimal chopping and often no cooking required. Yet just a small effort brings a big return: fresh flavours and nutrients that research suggests are real allies against disease, helping to protect your DNA and to keep your brain sharp too.
There's also evidence that folate, a B vitamin, helps protect against heart disease by keeping arteries healthy, and helps maintain brain function as you get older.
Vegetables belonging to the cruciferous family -
broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, bok choy
and kale also contain anti-cancer compounds that seem to
work by preventing carcinogens (cancer-causing substances)
from harming cells. How you cook and eat these vegetables
seems to matter - cooking them lightly by rapid steaming or
stir frying them, then chewing them carefully afterwards
seems to release more of these compounds.
Fast, fresh ways to eat more greens
- If time is short, you don't have to cook leafy greens separately - leafy Asian greens, spinach, and watercress can be stirred into almost any dish just before the end of cooking so they just have enough time to soften - try adding them to risotto, soups, and curries
- Broccoli, pasta and pesto. I am a fan of pesto with pasta and (before the carbophobics mount a swift attack), let me say this: you can reduce the amount of pasta by substituting broccoli and/or cauliflower for some or even half of your penne or linguine. It works like this. While the pasta cooks, rapidly steam broccoli/cauliflower until just tender, and make pesto (buzz a bunch of basil with a handful or so of pinenuts - sunflower seeds are a cheaper alternative - and grated parmesan, a garlic clove and a splash each of lemon juice and oil. Saute chopped shallots and garlic in a pan, stir in the broccoli/cauliflower florets. When it's heated through, mix it with the pasta and pesto.
- Stir spinach or rocket leaves through tomatoes and serve on sourdough toast for Sunday breakfast.
- Add Tuscan cabbage to bean soup. Tuscan cabbage (aka black leaf kale or cavola nero) has long dark crinkly leaves a bit like silverbeet. It's a classic ingredient of this very cheap and filling Italian soup called ribollita - see the recipe at http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art18321.asp
- Add broccoli sprouts to sandwiches and salads. Broccoli sprouts - an alfalfa lookalike available in some supermarkets or greengrocers - are a more potent source of broccoli's anti-cancer compounds than the familiar broccoli florets. This is because these compounds are concentrated in the seed, delivering 20 to 50 times more than the mature broccoli heads.
- Grow your own greens like rocket and spinach (snails seem to despise them). And for a leaf with an almost wasabi bite, try growing mustard greens, another member of the cruciferous family. The chilli of green leaves, mustard greens are great to pick when the leaves are young to use in small quantities or rice dishes.