JustCare

Tag: Potassium

  • Watercress is the healthiest vegetable in the world

    Watercress is the healthiest vegetable in the world

    This might be news to you, but the Centers for Disease Control ranks the health benefits of vegetables and fruits on a scale of 1 to 100. If you had to guess which vegetables get high marks, I bet you’d come up with spinach or kale. But, would you believe that watercress gets a perfect score of 100 as the healthiest vegetable in the world?

    What’s interesting is that the CDC’s ranking appears to have been around for a while, with no media attention. Recently, the watercress industry has promoted the information and, all of a sudden, there are lots of stories!

    For background, the CDC has a list of what it calls “powerhouse fruits and vegetables” or PFV. These are  foods that it says are most closely tied to lower risk of chronic disease. The list includes green leafy vegetables, yellow/orange citrus, and “cruciferous” or cross-bearing (thanks to their four petals) vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts.

    According to the CDC, watercress is a superfood. The CDC gives it a nutrition density score of 100, based on the amount of essential vitamins and minerals it contains. After watercress comes Chinese cabbage, with a score of 91.99, and chard, with a score of 89.27.

    Beet greens, spinach, chicory and leaf lettuce also are at the top of the CDC foods-with-high-nutrient-density list with high scores, but their scores are in the  70s and 80s.

    Watercress is a leafy green that is related to kale, cabbage, mustard and radishes. It has a strong peppery taste, perhaps a bit like horseradish.It has a lot of vitamin A, potassium, and vitamin C.

    Watercress has been around for a long time. What’s interesting is that in Europe and Asia people have been eating watercress for its health benefits over many centuries.

    If you can find watercress at the supermarket, add it to your salads. Watercress with smaller leaves has a less strong taste than older watercress, which has large leaves. You can eat the younger watercress leaves raw, but you might want to quickly saute the large watercress leaves.

    What’s at the bottom of the CDC’s list, with the lowest nutrient density? While all the fruits and vegetables on the list are very healthy, the CDC says that raspberries, leeks. sweet potatos, tangerines, cranberries, grapefruit, garlic, onions, and blueberries are not powerhouse foods. Who knew?

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  • Adding salt to your diet could be bad for your health. . . unless you also eat fruits and vegetables

    Adding salt to your diet could be bad for your health. . . unless you also eat fruits and vegetables

    A new study published in the European Heart Journal finds that adding salt to your food, as distinct from using salt in a recipe, could be bad for your health, leading to a greater risk of a lower life expectancy and premature death. However, people who eat lots of fruits and vegetables rich in potassium, along with added salt, should have no greater risk to their life expectancy.

    Nicole Lou writes in MedPageToday that this study, over nine years, found that people who add salt to their diet often ended up more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, stroke and cancer. People eating more salt did not see a heightened risk of death from dementia.

    In the US, the salt that people add to their meals, before digging in, represents between six and 20 percent of the total amount of sodium chloride they consume. So, if you are healthy, and you eat fruits and vegetables rich in potassium, you likely do not need to give another thought to the salt you add to your meals. Focus more on the fruits and vegetables!

    No one knows how much salt is the “right amount” to use. But, if you are not healthy, there is every reason for you to reduce the amount of salt you add to your meals at the table. It should help to lower your blood pressure and your risk of premature death.

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