諾魯月報第三十四版-營養專欄 Talking about Eating Vegetables－My Way, My Life

January 2013
諾魯月報-第三十四版封面

The Nutrition Corner

Talking About Eating Vegetables

Vegetables are an important part of your everyday diet. In general, vegetables contain water, vitamins, electrolytes, dietary fiber and antioxidants. Eating vegetables not only maintains our physical functions but also makes our body much healthier. There are some common vegetables provided by some supermarkets or Taiwan Technical Mission (TTM) in Nauru. These include cabbage, lettuce, cucumber, eggplant, carrot and radish. Of course, there are also pumpkin, sweet potato and potato. Whilst pumpkin, sweet potato and potato belong to vegetable group these crops contain more starch than leafy vegetables, so they are categorized as staple food, like rice and noodle. If we take too much staple food, the excessive starch will be digested and then converted into extra energy we don’t need. In the end, the extra energy will be stored as triglyceride (fat) in human body. Therefore, we should check the portion size of staple foods before we eat.

What can we get from eating vegetables? The following is a list of good things found in Vegetables:

Vitamins-these are the ingredients to maintain our lives by regulating the metabolism of carbohydrate, protein and fat. We cannot produce vitamins by ourselves, so we must consume and uptake from foods. Extremely important ones are Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and Vitamin K.

Electrolytes-these mainly regulate the balance of osmotic pressure, muscular contraction, signal transduction in nervous system, and body pH value maintenance. Although the amounts we need are just microgram (μg) or minigram (mg), they are still necessary for the body. Some of the most important ones are Sodium, Potassium, and Calcium.

Dietary fiber-Vegetables are rich in this. Dietary fiber keeps the bowels working and moving digested food more quickly through human body. It also increases the stool volume to prevent constipation. Most important of all, the scientific evidence shows that appropriate dietary fiber intake with meals is helpful to control postprandial blood sugar, so it is especially good for diabetic patients.

On 18^th of November, 2012, Taiwan Technical Mission (TTM) held a cooking demonstration and workshop for community at Location. Before demonstration, I spoke to locals about The Benefits of Eating Vegetables. I asked them some questions about the benefits of eating vegetables and how much and how many kinds do they eat a day? I found they knew eating vegetables is good for their health, but in many cases, they are so expensive that they cannot afford them. In addition, school feeding program provided lunch boxes to all infant school students that had vegetables as part of the meal. The problem is that children didn’t like to eat vegetables and in some cases even threw them away. I wondered if there is any solution to these problems. There must be a way to get students to start eating vegetables and get used to the taste. The first thing that came to my mind is that if you are interesting in eating vegetables but you cannot afford them, why not start planting vegetables yourselves. Don’t worry! Anyone who truly wants to plant vegetables can look for assistance from TTM. We are glad to help and see that you put worthwhile effort into planting, growing and eating vegetables. We can also educate people on the importance of eating vegetables. A further six cooking demonstration lectures will be held in communities in the coming year. Through education, you will not only find out the benefits of eating vegetables, but also understand how to make delicious vegetable dishes for you and your family to enjoy. Adding vegetables into daily meals gives more flavors to the food and is definitely good for your health. I hope that people in communities can join in the cooking demonstration lectures with us and acquire knowledge from it to improve the health of the whole island.