Chapter 5 – Why Is It Hard To Love Greens?

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.” – Doug Larson

Green leaves were never included into our food pyramids as a separate group because humans never looked at them as real food. Carrot tops have several times more nutrition than the roots, but the opinion that greens are for rabbits, sheep, and cows, has been preventing us from eating carrot tops in our salads. We routinely throw away the most nutritious part of the carrot plant! The roots are much more palatable to human taste than the tops because the roots contain significantly more sugar and water. The tops are bitter from the abundant amount of nutrients in them.

The following charts (below) clearly show the nutritional supremacy of the leaves over the roots in three different plants: beets, parsley and turnips. The only three categories in which roots are higher than leaves are calories, carbohydrates and sugar (except for turnips). These are the three components that make roots more palatable to us than the tops. I hope you will be impressed with some of these figures. For example, calcium in beet tops is 7 times higher than in its roots and vitamin A is 192 times higher in the tops than in the roots! In turnips vitamin K in the tops is 2,500 (!) times higher than in the roots. The compelling difference between nutrients in these two parts of the plants is obvious and indisputable. Think about thousands of tons of highly nutritious food, the green tops of the root vegetables, that are wasted year after year due to our ignorance, while the majority of people suffer from chronic deficiencies.

Naturally, one question comes to mind. Why don’t greens taste good to us? Isn’t our body wise enough to intuitively crave what it needs? Only few times in my life I have met people who have loved and craved greens. They told me that their parents didn’t give them stimulating foods, such as candy or fried foods, when they were babies. I consider these friends of mine to be the luckiest people in the world. They are ecstatic about a piece of cucumber or a fresh tomato. Looking at snow peas makes them salivate. My friend Vanessa says,

“Simple food has always tasted best to me. You really cannot appreciate the essence of a food unless you eat it all by itself. Then you can really enjoy its true taste. When my morn and I go to parties, we usually just eat the green leafy garnish from underneath the cuts of cheese. I would prefer it if the kale was on top of the cheese, but at least it’s there.”

However, most people would be distraught if they came to a party to find only cucumbers, tomatoes, and peas, or even worse, just that bed of greens. It seems clear to me that if we do crave the foods with stimulants, like sugar, caffeine, white flour, it means that our intricate bodily homeostasis has become distorted.

In the last few centuries, the human body has changed. The foods that have more stimulating tastes have become more appetizing to us than natural, unprocessed foods. However, everyone recognizes the reality that we cannot thrive on chocolate and pasta alone no matter how tasty they seem to be. From my research, I have learned that many people would not agree to a bland or bitter diet for the sake of feeling better even if they have a life threatening illness. Yet, many are continuing to inquire, “What are we supposed to eat? How are we supposed to feed our children in order to achieve better health?” Remarkably green smoothies are not only nutritious, but also delightfully palatable even to children.

I strongly believe that it is possible to restore our ability to like and crave healthy foods. We could learn to live on a natural, healthy diet, even though we have developed some powerful, unnatural cravings.