19 Foods You Should Eat Everyday #5 — Spinach
It’s dark in colour but ultra light in calories. It’s heavy in vitamins, minerals, fibre, chlorophyll and antioxidants. It can be eaten raw, cooked, as a side dish or the main attraction. Only slightly edged out by broccoli as the world’s healthiest food in our book, spinach is a super-functional superfood with healing and prevention power, and a lot to offer in the way of flavour too.
Here’s why you should eat your spinach everyday.
It’s low in calories
100 g of spinach has only 23 calories. 91% of its weight comes from water, meaning it can fill you up and make you feel full satisfied. It's an excellent source of hydration keeping your skin, hair and bones healthy.
Here’s the rest of spinach's impressive nutritional breakdown:
It’s a good source of fibre
Of its 3.6 g of carbohydrates, 2.2 come from fibre, an important nutrient we don’t get enough of in the Western diet. Getting the required amount of fibre leads to optimal gut health as the fibre passes through our digestive tract intact feeding the microflora in our gut with the nourishment they need to thrive. In turn, we enjoy optimal digestion, improved immunity and reduced inflammation to name just a few of the minor miracles that occur in our bodies when our guts are healthy.
It prevents cancer
Many of the antioxidants in spinach reduce oxidative stress and the damage caused by free radicals in the bloodstream, which are linked to numerous forms of cancer.
Spinach’s generosity doesn’t stop there, though. Vitamins K and A, C, B2, manganese, magnesium, folic acid, iron and potassium all contribute to the maintenance, health and regulation of human tissue and give our cells the nourishment they need to maintain their integrity and defend against irregularities.
The carotenoids and polyphenols in spinach help our bodies to suppress the growth of cancer cells and spinach’s chlorophyll content interferes with the absorption of potential carcinogens.
In short, spinach is the enemy of cancer on multiple fronts.
It’s great for our eyes
Spinach is a rich source of the compounds lutein and zeaxanthin, which protect our eyes from harmful rays of sunlight. Studies also show the same two carotenoids to play a role in the prevention of cataracts and blindness.
It’s prevents type 2 diabetes
Although a carbohydrate, spinach has a very low glycemic index of only 15. Its high magnesium content lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes and the aforementioned fibre in spinach makes it a very slow digesting, insulin friendly food source that will not trigger spikes in blood sugar. Moreover. the alpha-lipoid acid in spinach has shown to aid in the improvement of insulin sensitivity.
It’s heart healthy
The nitrates in spinach make it a very heart healthy food. Studies have shown spinach to lower blood pressure and decrease the risk of heart disease and stroke.
The downside
One of the things that makes spinach uniquely healthy can unfortunately for some of us also be the very thing that can make it dangerous when eaten in excess: calcium.
The oxalic acid or oxalate found in spinach can bind to the calcium inside the kidneys and other parts of the urinary tract forming stones that cause great pain and often lead to dangerous infection.
Those of us prone to developing kidney stones should limit our spinach intake more than others. That doesn’t mean you can’t eat spinach at all, but you may want to limit consumption to only once or twice a week.
Moreover, when that same oxalate binds to calcium or iron in the gut it can prevent the body from absorbing those minerals.
The good news is that boiling spinach has shown to reduce the level of oxalates by almost 90%, making it much safer to eat for people at risk of developing kidney stones.
The bad news is that the more you cook spinach, the more of its uniquely rich array of life-giving nutrients is lost.
The trick is finding that sweet spot where you “cook away” just enough of the bad and maintain the majority of the good, of which spinach has so much.
Whether you lightly fry it with olive oil and throw into a tossed leafy green salad, adorn your next pizza with those alluring dark green leaves that contrast so beautifully with the deep orange sauce and white mozzarella cheese, or dream up other new and exciting ways to enjoy one of those rare foods that boasts so much in the way of health and yet delights the palette at the same time, spinach is the swarthy green, highly versatile superfood we should all eat more of if we value our health.
More about me
I’m Scott Cohen — I run a coaching business called Kitchen Therapy where I help my clients learn to live with type 2 diabetes, obesity and metabolic disorders by learning how to live without them. https://www.kitchen-therapy-coaching.com/about-me
https://www.kitchen-therapy-coaching.com/
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