Spinach: The Miracle Leaf
Spinach can be described as the best nutritional food, with various health benefits.
Spinach is a flowering and it belongs to the family of Amaranthaceae. The flowers are yellow-green in colour and it contain small hard cluster fruits with several seeds in it. There many distinctions between older and new variety of spinach. The older ones have narrow leaves and they very bitter in taste, while the new ones have broad leaves and round seeds.
There are three varieties of spinach. They are the Savoy, which is dark green in colour and sold in fresh bunches in the market. The Flat/smooth leaf spinach, which have a broad and smooth leaves are grown for canned and frozen spinach, baby food and processed food. The Semi-Savoy, which is slightly crinkled is grown for marketing it fresh or frozen.
Spinach is rich in vitamin C, fiber and carotenoids. The spinach also contains the lutein and bio-flavonoids. Vitamin A and C , fiber and cartoneids present in this magic leaf helps to overcome cancer, especially the colon, lung and breast cancer. The lutein helps to prevent cataract, while the flavonoids present in the spinach helps to overcome the age related memory loss.
The health benefits of spinach are numerous. The vitamins and calcium in spinach, combined with the overall nutritional value of spinach, make this vegetable as one of the healthy food choices. Spinach contains choline and inositol, the substances that help to prevent atherosclerosis or thickening and hardening of arteries. Spinach is a good source of Vitamin K, which aids in the formation of the blood substance required for clotting of blood.
This miracle leaf, the Spinach with all its nutritional values can be taken by all ages, in the form of soups, salads, nice gravies or boiled with rice. Its very hard to make the kids take these spinach, but when cooked with a different taste, they would really love it.
A very simple recipe with this spinach leaves. Take a bunch of spinach, wash it well, cut it into small pieces and keep it separately. Grind 3 to 4 green chillies with a little ginger. Mix the spinach, ginger and garlic, wheat flour with enough salt. Make it into a dough with enough water. Make chappattis out of the dough. It would be a really tasty recipe when accompanied with a cup of onion raida.
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