Vegetables- Important For Your Body

Vegetables are the parts of plants that people eat, not including the fruit. A vegetable can be a leaf, root, stem, or flower bud. Each part of a plant does a different job, and the jobs determine what each part is built from. This is one reason different vegetables contain different nutrients.

Leaves capture sunlight. This work requires a lot of vitamins and minerals, which is why leaves such as spinach and kale contain a large amount of vitamins and minerals.

Roots grow underground and store energy for the plant. Plants store that energy as carbohydrate. Carbohydrate is the plant’s fuel to burn, energy to store, and material to build with. Roots such as carrots and sweet potatoes hold a large amount of stored carbohydrate.

Stems move water through the plant. The stem celery is mostly water and fiber.

Flower buds are the part of the plant preparing to open and reproduce. The small green beads on top of broccoli are unopened flowers. A complete flower is folded up inside each one, waiting to open. A lot of material is required to build a flower, and the broccoli plant has put that material in each bead. This is why broccoli holds a dense amount of compounds in a small space.

A compound is a substance made of two or more elements joined together. For example, water is a compound made of the elements hydrogen and oxygen.

Vegetables provide your body with fiber, vitamins, minerals, water, and antioxidants. Most vegetables provide very few calories for the amount of food you eat. This means you can eat a large amount of vegetables and receive a large amount of nutrients, while getting smaller amounts of calories.

Vegetables and your gut

Your intestines hold trillions of bacteria. Bacteria are living things too small to see without a microscope. The bacteria living in your intestines benefit you, and your body depends on them.

These bacteria eat fiber. Fiber is the part of a plant your body cannot break down on its own. When fiber reaches your intestines, the bacteria there break the fiber apart and produce compounds your body uses.

One of those compounds feeds the cells that line the wall of your intestines. That lining is one cell thick. The lining decides what passes into your bloodstream and what keeps moving through the intestines. When the lining is well fed, the lining does its job well.

The bacteria in your intestines also make certain vitamins your body can use. These vitamins are made inside your body rather than coming directly from food. The bacteria can only do this work when the bacteria are fed, and what feeds the bacteria is fiber.

The bacteria in your intestines also help train your immune system. Your immune system attacks what is foreign, and food is foreign. The bacteria teach your immune system to leave food alone so your body can take in the nutrients.

Different bacteria eat different kinds of fiber. Eating one vegetable feeds some of your bacteria, but eating many different kinds of vegetables feeds many different bacteria.

Vegetables and your blood pressure

Blood vessels are the tubes that carry blood through your body. Arteries carry blood away from your heart. Veins carry blood back to your heart. Capillaries are the smallest blood vessels and narrow enough that blood cells pass through nearly single file. The capillaries are where oxygen and nutrients pass out of your blood and into your cells. Blood vessels reach every part of your body.

Blood pressure is the force of your blood pushing against the walls of your blood vessels as your heart pumps. The walls of your arteries contain muscle, and that muscle can tighten or relax. When the muscle relaxes, the artery widens and blood moves through with less force.

When the force of your blood stays too high for years, the walls of your blood vessels are damaged. Because blood vessels reach every part of your body, that damage can affect many different places in your body.

Vegetables provide potassium. Potassium is a mineral your body uses to manage the amount of fluid inside and outside your cells. Some of that fluid is the liquid part of your blood. When your body manages that fluid well, there is less volume pushing against the walls of your blood vessels, and the force stays at a healthy level.

Leafy greens contain a compound your body converts into a gas called nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is the signal that tells the muscle in your artery walls to relax. Eating leafy greens gives your body what it requires to send that signal.

Vegetables and your eyes

In the back of your eye, there is a small area that is responsible for producing sharp, detailed vision. You use this area to read words and recognize faces.

Two antioxidant compounds collect in that small area. Those compounds come from your food. Your body cannot make those compounds on its own. Dark leafy greens provide a large amount of both compounds. Corn and peas also provide some of those two compounds.

When light enters the front of your eye and travels toward the back, those two compounds absorb high-energy light before the light reaches the light-sensitive cells. The compounds act like a filter. 

That small area produces a lot of unstable molecules. The area works constantly, uses a lot of oxygen, and is exposed to light all day. The two compounds neutralize those unstable molecules, the same way antioxidants neutralize unstable molecules everywhere else in your body.

Vegetables and your bones

Your bones are built on a soft mesh made of protein. Minerals attach to that mesh and make the bone hard. Protein without minerals would bend. Minerals without protein would be brittle. Together, the two make bone that is hard and flexible at the same time.

Vegetables provide vitamin K. Vitamin K is an essential vitamin your body uses to activate certain proteins. Activating a protein means switching that protein on so the protein can do its work.

Vitamin K activates two proteins that work with calcium. In your bones, one protein holds calcium in place, which keeps your bones hard. In the walls of your blood vessels, the other protein holds onto calcium so the calcium cannot settle there and make the walls stiff.

Leafy greens provide more vitamin K than any other vegetable.

Cooked or raw

Cooking changes vegetables. Some nutrients in vegetables become easier for your body to absorb after cooking. Other nutrients are damaged by heat. Which vegetable you eat and how you eat the vegetable, raw or cooked, determines the nutrients your body will receive.

Some nutrients sit locked inside plant cells. The walls of those cells are made of fiber, which makes the walls tough. Chewing and digesting break open some of the cells. Heat breaks open more of the cells, releasing more of what is inside. Heat also changes the form of certain nutrients into a form your body absorbs more easily.

Some vegetables give your body more nutrients when the vegetables are cooked. Cooking tomatoes releases lycopene, the red antioxidant compound in tomatoes, and changes lycopene into a form your body absorbs better. Cooking carrots releases beta carotene, the orange antioxidant compound in carrots. Lycopene and beta carotene both dissolve in fat, so cooking tomatoes and carrots with a fat such as oil increases how much of these compounds your body absorbs.

Spinach contains compounds that bind to calcium and iron. Those compounds reduce how much calcium and iron your body can absorb from raw spinach. Cooking spinach reduces those compounds, which frees the calcium and iron for your body to use. For spinach, heat removes a blocker rather than opening a cell.

Some vegetables give your body more nutrients when the vegetables are raw. Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts store a compound and an enzyme in separate places inside the plant. An enzyme is a substance that causes a change to happen. When you chop or chew these vegetables raw, the compound and the enzyme meet and produce a new compound. That new compound signals your cells to build their own protective proteins. Heat destroys the enzyme, so the compound and the enzyme never meet and the signal is never sent. Garlic and onions work the same way, with a different compound and a different enzyme. 

Bell peppers and cabbage provide a large amount of vitamin C, but heat destroys some of the vitamin C. Eating bell peppers and cabbage raw gives your body more of that vitamin C.

Cooking vegetables in water moves some nutrients out of the vegetables and into the water. Those nutrients are not destroyed. Those nutrients are in the liquid. Pouring the water down the drain pours those nutrients away. Eating the liquid as soup or sauce provides your body with those nutrients.

Neither eating cooked nor raw vegetables is the right answer. Eating vegetables both ways gives your body a wider range of nutrients.

Eating the colors

The color of a vegetable is determined by the compounds inside the vegetable, the same as fruit. Orange, red, deep green, purple, and white vegetables contain different compounds. Many of those compounds are antioxidants. Antioxidants are compounds that protect cells from damage.

A steady supply of antioxidants from food is required for your body. Different antioxidants work in different parts of your cells. Some antioxidants travel through the watery parts and some travel through the fatty parts.

Vegetables of different colors also tend to provide different vitamins and minerals. Deep green leaves provide vitamin K. Orange vegetables provide beta carotene.

Eating vegetables of many colors matters because different colors provide different antioxidants and different nutrients, and different antioxidants reach different places within your cells.

If you are increasing the nutrient dense food you eat, eating vegetables is an important place to start.

Stacy 🌺

Information about how the body works in this post comes from my learning and research.

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I share my experiences and my perspective. Eating and healing look different for everyone. If you are struggling with food or your relationship with your body, please find support. You don’t have to do this alone.