Introduction to Vegetables

In traditional cooking, there is always something that is good for something. Not a pill. But a certain chicken soup made with this or that ingredient. Or a tea or milk prepared in the local family fashion. Or the way a region or the country prepares a bean dish, or its vegetables. Those ways of preparing food were all invented/created to benefit, protect and nourish the people that eat/ate it. Or else they would never have lived on to have had the children that came before us.

Some cultures have advanced and refined those principles, through thousands of years, to such degree, that they have discovered and pinpointed the properties that each food and vegetable have on the body. I am not talking about nutritionists that have sprung up in the 20th century to promote calorie counting, low-fat diets, high-fat diets, or just "diets" in general. I am talking about ancient eastern traditions such as macrobiotic, ayurveda...

I am not familiar with ayurvedic principles and never took any courses on it. But I did learn quite a lot from macrobiotics, just by virtue of my mother being deeply involved in it, and later on by taking courses myself. I don't pretend to be an authority or doctor, but I did learn a few principles for life and for keeping a healthy family.

One interesting fact is how they relate all the foods that they eat to every organ and part of the body. A case for learning to cook and eating all kinds of vegetables and grains? Absolutely.

Here is a list for vegetables and how they beneficially affect us, one post at the time-