Healing with Food Newsletter

Too Much Salad?

Accompanying recipe: Velvety Green Couils

Today salads are almost a religion. Now there's nothing wrong with salad per se, but I'm concerned for the many people I know—mostly women—who fill up on salad in an effort to control their weight. Regretfully, they don't get enough of the other good stuff and, in time, this compromises their overall health.

If you have low energy, tend to be cold, have cold extremities, low libido, arthritic type complaints, digestive problems or chronic illness then a daily salad is contraindicated. If you have any of these complaints, it is the middle of winter and you think that lettuce will keep you warm and build your energy, you're misinformed. That's not the nature of lettuce.

Lettuce is a cooling food that's great in the summer and for people with overheated conditions. Salads are excellent cleansing foods; but they don't build your energy reserve.

When it's cold outside, you stay warm by wearing warm clothing and putting more heat into your food. Yes, high heat does destroy enzymes and B- and C vitamins, but cooking also energizes vegetables and makes them more warming and easier to digest. For more information, see my various books and my articles, Thermal Properties of Food and Vegetables—Best Cooked or Raw.

Also, newsletter subscribers, watch for my mid-month recipe that offers a well-cooked vegetable dish that easily could become one of your favorite recipes and occasionally replace a salad.

May you be well nourished!

Rebecca Wood