Vegetables
One serving of vegetables equates to 225 g cooked or 100 g raw, chopped.
Two servings are recommended daily, one uncooked, to preserve the original nutrient content. When cooked in water, however, the food loses some of the vitamins and minerals to the cooking water.
To preserve the nutritional value of vegetables, the following should be avoided:
- Long soaking.
- Too much cooking water, and/or discarding the cooking water.
- Excessive scraping, peeling, washing, and chopping.
- Repeatedly heating leftovers.
- Chopping very finely.
There are two types of food fibre:
- Insoluble fibre: the most commonly known. Foods high in insoluble fibre are fruit, vegetables, legumes, and wholemeal cereals. Cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and resistant starch are insoluble food fibre.
- Soluble fibre: soluble fibre forms a type of gel in the intestines. Foods high in soluble fibre include spinach, beans, peas, prickly pear or nopales (paddle cactus), nuts, cereals (especially oats), and legumes such as soya beans, French Beans (kidney beans or broad beans), as well as fruit such as papaya, apple peel, mango and dried apricots, etc. Inulin, gum, mucilage, pectin and fructooligosaccharide are soluble food fibre.
