Celebrate Irish culture by eating naturally green, healthy foods

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, the holiday that celebrates Irish culture — and all things green. March also happens to be National Nutrition Month and this year’s theme is “put your best fork forward.” This is the time of year where celebrating healthy food and St. Paddy’s day can easily go hand in hand by eating green.

Cierra Robbins, Hatfield ShopRite registered dietitian, said leafy green vegetables such as kale and spinach are full of minerals, vitamins and disease-fighting properties. These kinds of foods offer a variety of benefits, she said. Calcium is great for bone health. Potassium helps manage blood pressure. The Vitamin B6 helps maintain a healthy nervous system and is important for blood health. Vitamin C is important for overall health. Some vegetable like collard greens contain beta-carotene which helps protect the skin from sun damage.

Jessica Garnett, registered dietitian at Creative Health Services in Pottstown, said a lot of those green leafy foods are known as “superfoods” because they have so much good stuff in them. She said naturally green foods usually have a lot of folate which helps with cell division, something that’s very beneficial to pregnant women.

“Whenever you’re trying to eat nutritiously, it’s good to include a lot of different colors especially colors of the rainbow,” said Margaret Moses, a registered dietitian of acac Fitness & Wellness Center in West Chester and Exton.

Moses said many green foods contain substances that go beyond some of the minerals and vitamins that are often found in food such as antioxidants.

“Antioxidants actually work like a little PacMan inside of our body and they help us get rid of free radicals,” she said. “Antioxidants help you look beautiful on the inside.”

Garnett said another great benefit about green vegetables and vegetables in general are that they are naturally low in calories, carbohydrates, sugar, salt and fat.

“So they’re like a natural diet food,” she said.

“All of your vegetables contain the least amount of calories with the most amount of nutrition of anything else you can eat,” Moses said.

When it comes to getting kids to eat their green vegetables, it may take some time. Moses said a lot of the green vegetables may taste very bitter to children in their raw form because their taste buds haven’t evolved yet.

“You have to offer a new food to a child on average seven times before they say yes,” she said.

Robbins said a child most likely won’t eat something that’s unfamiliar and mysterious to them.

“Ultimately the child needs to be comfortable with something before they voluntarily eat it,” she said.

Preparing green vegetables in different ways can also help to encourage children to give them a try.

“When you roast vegetables, it brings out their natural sugars so things that are roasted tend to have a little bit less of that bitter taste,” Garnett said.

Robbins said a lot of times people think the only way to eat green leafy vegetables are in salads but there are plenty of other methods. They can be used as wraps instead of using sandwich bread. The vegetables can also be added to soup, steamed or even turned crunchy such as in kale chips.

Moses said an important thing to remember when cooking vegetables is that they contain B vitamins which are water soluble. This means when vegetables are cooked in water then the nutrients are released into that water. She said if you do cook them in water, try to eat it as a soup so you still consume those nutrients.

Green bell peppers, a head of broccoli and celery are on display.