Finding a healthy balance

Feast and famine.

In my work life I work on Cadbury and as part of that I get to taste quite a lot of chocolate. Great on one hand but not so good if you want to get healthy.

Obviously the exercise involved in preparing the plot by digging and weeding does some good but it can only do so much. Especially when the weather encourages me to stay indoors.

So I also rely on the hoped for health benefits of the vegetables we grow.

The general principle seems to be don't over cook the vegetables - the fashionable way is to have them with a little bite. Steaming or stir frying tends to get the required result without leaching all the goodness out.

If you do boil, then try use the water with nutrients in - maybe as a stock or in the gravy.

I have been brought up on my aunt's veg which, though microwaved, is usually meltingly soft so I find the crispy veg thing still a little alien to me - I'll have to force myself to be fashionable.

Actually it's not just modern tastes that discourage overcooking. According to the excellent ministry of food exhibition at the imperial war museum (sadly finished now) -during the war much effort was put into improving the nation's health and getting the most from the limited food we did have. Never mind that part of the motivation was to have enough healthy men of fighting age to send into an essentially unhealthy situation, war. The legacy of vitamins and food for health was a good one that lasted. At least until ready meals and fast food came along.

Some people shy away from frozen vegetables as they worry it has been tampered with or lost its goodness somehow but in fact the vegetables are often frozen within hours of picking so can be fresher and retain more nutrients than the unfrozen vegetables you see on the supermarket shelves.

The general rule though for healthy veg is that the closer to raw the better.

However rules are made to be broken and some foods are healthier cooked. Tomatoes in particular contain more lycopene when cooked than raw. Lycopene is good because it has
Free radicals that have key cancer fighting properties.
They are also apparently easier to digest.