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Every Monday, we find the nutrition Time.news of Dr. Binetou Cheikh Seck, dietician-nutritionist at the Cabinet dietetic nutridéal in Dakar, Senegal.
Why is it important to eat enough vegetables?
Let’s start with some examples of vegetables: carrot, cabbage, eggplant, pumpkin, turnip, African eggplant, okra, etc.
Attention : potato, cassava and maize are not vegetables, but starches.
Vegetables are a family of essential foods, because they are sources of essential vitamins and minerals. They are also a source of antioxidants that help us prevent many diseases, fiber that ensures satiation and prevents constipation, and water. Vegetables give us all these good things without being very high in calories, which means that we can eat a lot of vegetables without the risk of weight gain.
But the majority of us don’t eat enough vegetables and it’s not getting better…
In Africa and everywhere else in the world, we see that the consumption of vegetables has fallen and continues to fall, this is one of the reasons why chronic diseases are more and more prevalent. I have a hard time getting my patients to eat enough vegetables. And yet, we should eat more vegetables on the plate than starches and meat at each meal.
What are your practical tips for enriching our diet with vegetables?
- Systematically prepare vegetables for each mealeven with dishes that do not traditionally contain it (for example: Yassa from Senegal or seed sauce in Côte d’Ivoire).
- Vary the type of vegetablesto avoid monotony and therefore disgust
- Vary the preparation : there are many forms of vegetable preparation. You should even look for recipes on the internet: vegetables in sauce, raw vegetables, vegetable soup, vegetable puree, vegetable gratins, etc.
- You have to prepare well seasoned vegetables with garlic, onions, parsley, green onions, spices, aromatic herbs.
- You should limit the cooking time of vegetables to a maximum of 15 minutes, so that they keep their texture, their taste and above all their nutritional value.
- When eating, if the vegetables do not pass by themselves, they must be mixed with the starches of the dishfor example, mix rice and mixed vegetables.