Since ancient times, the idea of “unity of heaven and man” has been reflected in every angle of life, and the changes of the 24 solar terms have also influenced the people’s clothing, food, housing and transportation. As the ancients say: eat flowers in spring, leaves in summer, fruits in autumn and roots in winter. Radish, lotus root, potatoes, yams and other “root vegetables”, compared to other vegetables, pesticide residues are lower, often safer.
In the fall and winter, root vegetables are in season, and they are fresh, inexpensive, and resistant to storage. Let’s learn more about the nutrition of common root vegetables next.
Radish.
As the saying goes, “Eat radish in winter and ginger in summer and you won’t need a doctor’s prescription for a year”. In China’s folklore, known as “small ginseng” radish, can be said to be one of the best products in the autumn and winter season. Raw can not only help digestion, increase appetite, but also can go greasy, eliminate food and gas; if it is made into dishes with other food partners, it also has different effects. There are many varieties of radish, including white skin, red skin, green skin, red heart, white heart, as well as round and long-shaped varieties, but this does not include carrots. It is suitable for both raw and cooked consumption, with a pungent taste and cold nature in raw form and a sweet taste and slightly cool nature in cooked form, and has high nutritional and medicinal value. The Yuan Dynasty poet also wrote this poem in praise of radish: “Cooked food is as sweet as taro, raw food is as crisp as pear”. At the same time, the famous medical scientist Li Shizhen also highly respected the radish, advocating that every meal must be eaten, he mentioned in the “Compendium of Materia Medica”: the radish can be “big down the gas, eliminating grain and neutral, to remove the evil heat”.
Radish has a unique spicy flavor, raw food can help digestion, stomach and appetite, increase appetite, after eating meat and other greasy food, raw radish can relieve greasy and refreshing to make the stomach and abdomen comfortable; over-eating sweet potato stomach acid bloating full of heartburn, raw radish or chew salty radish can eliminate food and smooth gas. At the same time, raw radish can also promote bile secretion, help digest fat.
In addition, radish is one of the main raw materials for pickles, kimchi and dried. The nutritional composition contains glucose, sucrose, fructose, polypentose, crude fiber, vitamin C, minerals and a small amount of crude protein, but also contains a variety of amino acids.
It is worth mentioning that people are used to peeling off the skin of radish when they eat it, not knowing that 98% of the calcium contained in radish is in the skin of radish, so it is best to eat radish with skin. Of course, although the radish is good, but there are also taboos when eating. As the radish taste pungent sweet, cold, so the spleen and stomach cold, eat not or weak body should eat less; radish broken gas, serving ginseng, raw and cooked earth, He Shou Wu and other tonic do not eat, otherwise it will affect the effectiveness of the medicine. In addition, because the consumption of raw radish produces more gas, it is also not good for ulcer disease, so patients with such diseases should eat less.
Yam.
At the Beijing Olympics, Jamaican athlete Bolt’s amazing speed led people to speculate about the source of their ample physical strength. When it comes to the reason why his son can run so fast, the father of the “flying man” Bolt, Wellesley? The most important thing that Bolt would like to thank is the yam of his hometown. In Bolt’s hometown of Trelawny, thousands of pounds of yam are exported from here every year. “He grew up eating yams, and they made him the force he is today.” Wellesley recalls.
Yam is both an herb and a delicacy, a familiar tonic treasure. Studies have proven that yams contain several times more B vitamins than rice and are extremely rich in potassium among the minerals. More importantly, yam is rich in a variety of bioactive components, including yam polysaccharides, mucilage proteins, saponins, allantoin, dehydroepiandrosterone, etc.
The oligosaccharides in yam have been found to have excellent immune enhancing effects through research. The bioactive substances in yam have good anti-aging effect, which can improve the proliferation ability of animal immune cells and delay the aging of thymus.
Mucilage protein of yam can improve the immune function of animals and improve cardiovascular function, while dehydroepiandrosterone contained in yam also has a variety of anti-aging effects such as strengthening immune function, improving memory, sedating and sleeping, delaying skeletal muscle aging, and preventing atherosclerosis.
The mannan in yam is a kind of hemicellulose that can dissolve in water, which can absorb water and swell 80-100 times, making it bigger in the stomach after eating and easy to produce a feeling of fullness; the mucin in it can also lower blood cholesterol, prevent lipid deposition in the cardiovascular system and help prevent atherosclerosis.
In addition, yam has a complementary effect on diabetes. In addition to the ease of satiety, which is conducive to food control, mannoprotein has the function of improving glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity. Because of the high starch content in yam, it is better to replace part of the staple food with yam when consuming it, that is, to reduce the amount of staple food appropriately, especially for diabetic patients, so as not to bring the problem of excess energy.
Kohlrabi.
Kohlrabi, also known as Wang Manqing, straight lotus, kale head, is a kind of kale, the scientific name is bulb kale. Kohlrabi is a vegetable between the big head of cabbage and cabbage, smooth and tender leaves, stems expanded into a spherical shape, with obvious leaf marks, green, white or purple skin, spring and fall cultivation. It can be stir-fried or eaten cold and raw. I remember when I was a kid, every winter, my family would buy some kohlrabi, especially in the old days when food was scarce, a small plate of shredded kohlrabi in winter was crisp and refreshing. It is rich in vitamin C, up to 41 mg per 100 grams, much higher than apples, pears, grapes and other fruits, and it also contains a lot of potassium, which is very beneficial to the human body.
According to Chinese medicine, it is cool in nature and sweet and pungent in taste, and has the effect of broadening the chest, stopping phlegm, resolving cough, waking up wine and lowering fire, and clearing the mind. The fresh juice of skunk cabbage can be used to treat gastric diseases, and long eating of skunk cabbage can also promote the healing of gastric and duodenal ulcers.
Lotus root.
In the Qing Dynasty, lotus root was designated as an imperial tribute. The lotus root is the same sound as the word “even”, so folklore uses it to wish for a happy marriage. Lotus root is the underground stem of the expanded part of the lotus root, lotus root belongs to the water lily family. Lotus root is mainly distributed in the Yangtze River basin and the southern provinces in autumn, winter and early spring can be harvested.
The lotus root is short and cylindrical, with thick and smooth outer skin, gray or silvery gray, and white inside; the central part of the node is expanded, with a number of pores of different sizes, arranged symmetrically on the left and right; the body is heavy, and the texture is crisp and tender. The lotus root cultivated for food in China can be divided into two categories: the first category is the root species. The rhizome is fat, white, crisp, sweet, high yield, not much lotus seeds; the second type of lotus seeds, smaller lotus, slightly grayish flesh, poor quality, but more results, mainly harvesting lotus seeds. As a vegetable for consumption to lotus seeds mainly. Lotus root, slightly sweet and crisp, very refreshing, can be eaten raw or cooked, and the medicinal value is quite high, is a good food and tonic for the old, young, women and children, the weak and sick.
Lotus root mainly has the following therapeutic effects.
1, clear heat and cool the blood: lotus root is cold in nature, has the effect of clearing heat and cooling the blood, can be used to treat hot digestive disease; lotus root taste sweet and liquid, thirsty for fever, epistaxis, hemoptysis, blood is particularly beneficial.
2, laxative, anti-diarrheal, spleen and appetite: lotus root contains mucus protein and dietary fiber, which can combine with bile acid salts, cholesterol and triglycerides in food in the body, so that they are excreted from the stool, thus reducing the absorption of lipids. Lotus root emits a unique fragrance and also contains tannin, which has a certain effect of strengthening the spleen and stopping diarrhea, can improve appetite, promote digestion, appetite and strengthen the middle, which is beneficial to restore the health of people with poor appetite and loss of appetite.
3, blood and muscle: lotus root has a high nutritional value, rich in iron, calcium and other trace elements, plant protein, vitamins and starch content is also very rich, has obvious benefits for blood, enhance the role of human immunity. Therefore, traditional Chinese medicine said it: “the main tonic to nourish the soul, benefit the qi.
4, stop bleeding and disperse blood stasis: lotus root contains a large amount of tannic acid, which has a vasoconstrictive effect and can be used to stop bleeding. The lotus root can also cool the blood and disperse it. Chinese medicine believes that it stops bleeding without leaving stasis, making it a good food for fever and blood disorders.
In addition, Pan Ling and Li Deliang from the Institute of Natural Medicine, Yunnan Baiyao Group Co., Ltd. evaluated the effects of lotus root residue, lotus root nodes and lotus root buds on weight and fat reduction in adult obese rats. Through the experiment, it was found that lotus root and lotus root buds had the effect of reducing body weight in rats; the amount of fat in the abdominal cavity also showed a trend of reduction; lotus root also significantly prevented the elevation of blood insulin and improved the insulin sensitivity index in a nutritional obese rat model. This experiment suggests that lotus root is useful for the prevention of obesity and diabetes.
Potatoes.
The second article of the “Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents” prepared by the Chinese Nutrition Association recommends that people “eat more vegetables, fruits and potatoes”. The United States Department of Agriculture a few years ago recommended the top ten health foods, potatoes are also on the top.
Usually potatoes include potatoes, sweet potatoes, taro and so on. Many people think that potatoes have little value when they mention potatoes, except for the large amount of starch. In fact, it is not, although potatoes starch content than ordinary vegetables is a bit higher, but they are the real low-fat high fiber food. Potatoes contain almost no fat, which is rich in dietary fiber, to promote gastrointestinal peristalsis, to prevent constipation have a very good effect. Moreover, potatoes are typically high potassium and low sodium food, its high potassium content, so many fruits are ashamed of themselves. In terms of vitamins, potatoes not only contain food among the pressure of vitamin C, more rich in a variety of B vitamins; potatoes in the polyphenol composition and good antioxidant, cardiovascular disease prevention effect.
But to take advantage of potatoes, it is best to eat them as a staple food. Eaten as a staple food, neither salt, nor sugar, nor oil, can play their original nutritional advantages. At the same time, potatoes as a staple food, compared with rice and white flour, blood sugar rises slowly, satiety effect is strong, can help prevent obesity and diabetes, but also conducive to the control of blood pressure. With potatoes instead of grain, the total amount of starch per day will not only not rise, but may also decline; while vitamin intake will be significantly increased, more fiber, more minerals, for improving the nutritional quality of the day, a great help.