What is the Healthiest Vegetable?

The healthiest prize for all vegetables goes to swiss chard. Chard is the 'king' of all vegetables. It is also widely available, cheap and very easy to cook.

One cup of cooked chard is only 35 calories. But the wealth of nutrition you can get from this one cup is quite incredible.

Vitamin A
Typically we think of carrots when we think of foods high in Vitamin A. But one cup of cooked chard will give you 109 percent of the daily recommended intake of Vitamin A.

Vitamin C
Normally we think of citrus fruits to get our vitamin C quota. But one cup of chard will supply us with 52% of our daily needs for Vitamin C.

Dietary Fiber
Bran comes to mind when we think of meeting our daily dietary needs for fiber. But one cup of chard provides us with 15 percent of our daily needs for dietary fiber. That's about the same amount as in one heavy-duty bran muffin.

Potassium
Potassium is very important for the nerves. You'd have to eat two bananas (the highest concentrated fruit for potassium) to equal one cup of cooked chard and get 27 percent of your daily requirement for potassium.

Vitamin E
Vitamin E is very important for a healthy sex drive and anti-aging benefits. Chard is one of the few vegetables with significant Vitamin E. It provides 16 percent of our daily requirement.

Calcium
We usually think of milk when we're concerned about getting adequate calcium. But swiss chard makes a good substitute. One cup of chard has about 35% of the calcium (and only one quarter of the calories) as one cup of 2% milk.

To see more about the outstanding health benefits of chard, check out the best source of non-profit nutritional information online; the WHFoods site. They provide an impressive wealth of information about the world's healthiest foods.

The photos shown here are by rappy and Mom the Barbarian at Flickr.

Chard is part of a group of vegetables known as 'greens'. Greens include chard, kale and collard greens and these three vegetables are almost equal in their tremendous health benefits.

Forget about counting calories and see more about how eating vegetables is a great way to lose weight by actually eating more food instead of less.

Chard is also really easy to cook. See a quick recipe here.

Teen Age Weight Loss - Personal Story

I was an overweight teenager. Not by much mind you. At my fattest, I weighed about 165 pounds. Given I'm now sixty nine inches in height, this would not have been considered obese by any means. But as a teenage girl growing up in the late 1970's, it was a problem for me.

In those days, there were not as many overweight teens as today. I was quite self-conscious about being somewhat overweight. But I did it to myself with emotional over-eating. The problem persisted, off on and on for about two or three years.

My parents were recent immigrants. They didn't have much money to spare. In one sense this was fortunate for me. We hardly ever had any kind of packaged or processed foods in the house. Although my parents didn't have much money, we probably ate better than most households. We didn't go out to eat at fast food restaurants. My mother didn't buy any food that came in a box. There was hardly any processed food ever. It was basically meat and potatoes, some vegetables, quite frequent home-made baked goods, and (also for snacks) lots of bread and butter. Bread was the key staple. Typical central European food fare.

I remember that there was always milk in the fridge. But I don't recall having juice except on special occasions. And Coke or any other pop drink was completely unheard of in our home. Knowing what I do now, in my personal research about nutrition, I know we ate far too few beans and legumes, greens, fish, raw nuts and good breakfast items such as oatmeal. We usually had a vegetable at dinner, but the variety and choice of vegetables could have been much better. And I now know that we overdid it on the milk, butter, cheese and bread.

But it would be difficult to become obese based on the food available in our home back then. So I never did. But due to emotional hang-ups (in hindsight, due mostly to the tensions in the home due to my father's mental illness) I did manage to eat myself into weighing at least twenty pounds more than ideal.

I remember putting myself on a self-devised diet when I was in grade 10. I lost all the excess weight quite quickly eating dried cottage cheese and some other stuff that I don't remember. Everyone noticed, even my handsome P.E. teacher wanted to know the secret of my weight loss at that time ;-). But I gradually put most of the weight back on.

Once I left home at 18 to go to university, my life changed and I didn't have time to think about food. Throughout my twenties and up to my mid thirties I was very active physically. I played lots of tennis and walked and jogged frequently. Given that I had grown up on unprocessed foods, I continued to eat relatively healthy foods and never needed to diet. My weight problems were over until just recently (see the post about my post-pregnancy weight loss battle).

If you are a teenager reading this, I would love to give you advice but I am not a qualified nutritionist. One thing I can say with certainty is that it is really helpful to learn about truly nutritious foods. There is so much misinformation out there about what really healthy foods are.

You really don't need to go hungry to lose weight. If you can focus on eating lots of the healthiest foods and beginning some kind of walking (or other regular exercise) program, you will be truly set on the path to weight loss and to reaching your ideal weight. I'd recommend reading all about the healthiest foods at WHFoods.com. This is a non-profit website and the best source of nutritional information I've come across.

Losing Weight without Calorie Counting

Losing weight without calorie counting is the best long-term approach to a healthy and ideal body weight.

No one is disputing that the less calories you eat, the more weight you will lose (given a constant physical activity level). However, losing weight for good is much easier with a fundamental change in foods consumed, foods which actually require that you consume much more food weight on your diet plan than you do now.

Can you imagine being told to eat more food in order to lose weight? We are talking about food that weighs a lot, food that is dense, fiber rich and nutritious. Nothing else will satiate quite as well. Think of a whole pound of broccoli, for example, the central part of your dinner entree, steamed and sprinkled with butter and sunflower seeds.

Tiny portions and calorie counters are the opposite of this logic, and will never satisfy or satiate.

Very few studies have actually been done on this (because no corporate or pharmaceutical pill-popping dieting product stands to gain anything from such studies and hence will not sponsor them), but the secret to permanent weight loss is to eat the healthiest foods. And to eat lots of them!

A recent study at Pennsylvania State University asked dieters to eat lots of foods that were heavy in water and fiber (fruits and vegetables) and to not count calories or fat grams. The people that followed this regiment lost more weight than the control group who were asked to count calories and take small portions.

Filling up on vegetables, and not restricting yourself as to how much you eat of these, has got to be the most healthy and painless way to lose weight. Vegetables are so delicious if you give them a good try!

Most people are not aware of the existence of three top vegetables in terms of nutrition and health benefits. These would be kale, swiss chard and collard greens.

These three vegetables are actually much more nutritious than even spinach and broccoli, which are both super foods. Find out where you can buy these nearby. (The organics store is sure to have them, but maybe your local superstore carries them as well).

Once you've bought your kale or spinach chard, wash it, cut it up, throw it in the pot with a little water and let it steam for a few minutes. Add some butter or olive oil and a bit of salt once it's steamed enough for your liking. You'll be amazed how good it tastes and how satisfyingly filling it is.

Try cooking a big serving of oatmeal with fruit for breakfast and making heaps of vegetables the central part of your lunch and dinner (with some brown rice, lentils or chili and nuts or seeds and a small bit of meat or fish) and you will lose mega weight in no time.

I'd be really keen on tracking people's daily progress with this. I'm not qualified to counsel dieters in any medical way, but I do know a lot about healthy eating and would like to provide emotional and informational support. If you are inclined to try this, please comment on your experience below. I will answer your questions in very short order.