8 myths and facts about vegetables and fruits
If you gnaw enough carrots, you'll never have to put glasses on your nose and too many bananas will give you fat knees. For years we were fooled with all sorts of facts and fables about vegetables and fruit. It's high time to change that. Which rules about that stay way too long in the fridge and yogurt containers that are just about to walk out of the house on their own. vegetables and fruit are true and what are we being fooled about?
These are the facts and fables about the content of your vegetable drawer.
1. Fresh vegetables have a higher nutritional value than frozen vegetables
Fresh vegetables only have more vitamins than the frozen variant if they are just harvested. In practice, however, it can happen that a pack of frozen spinach actually contains more nutrients than the spinach in the vegetable drawer. Because we tend to forget that fresh vegetables end up on the shelves days after being picked. In the meantime, unfortunately, many nutrients are lost. Frozen vegetables are immediately frozen after harvest, which preserves most vitamins and minerals. So it's certainly not always better to toss a bag of fresh spinach into the wok.
2. Spinach makes you strong
Perhaps the most well-known vegetable fable there is, and the biggest one ever told at the kitchen table. For years, it was thought that there was an insane amount of iron in spinach (40 milligrams of iron per 100 grams) that would give you muscles. At the beginning of the 20th century, a small mistake was made during the analysis of spinach. The comma was placed one place too far to the right. So there isn't 40 grams of iron in 100 grams of spinach, but a little under 4 milligrams. It's certainly healthy, but saying it makes you iron-strong is a bit too much.
3. Asparagus makes your urine smell
Asparagus can leave an unpleasant smell when you urinate. This happens in about half of asparagus eaters. The smell is caused by the presence of sulfur-containing compounds in the asparagus plant. Our liver converts those substances into so-called methyl mercaptans (phew, that's a mouthful). These sulfur compounds leave our body, well, through our pee.
4. Onions can be used as a cleaning agent
Yes girlfriend, I don't even want to think about scrubbing my kitchen with an onion. That's not going to happen. Because an onion won't clean your kitchen, but what that fragrant bulb does do is make copper or leather shine again. Cut an onion in half and rub it over your dull leather shoes. Let it dry for a bit and then go over it again with a wool cloth. The smell of the onion will disappear on its own, but your shoes will look new again.
5. Place an onion next to your bed to get rid of your runny nose as quickly as possible
When you have a cold, you can cut an onion into quarters and place it next to your bed. The oils and the smell that are released help very well against a stuffy nose.
6. Potatoes are fattening
Potatoes are often seen as a carbohydrate bomb and thus a huge fattening agent. A potato indeed contains a lot of fast carbohydrates, but they are still very healthy. A potato contains vitamin B6, vitamin C, fiber, and twice as much potassium as a banana. A food source with fast carbohydrates means that the carbohydrates are quickly broken down in your blood and your blood sugar rises faster. If you don't have diabetes or weight problems, you can just put that potato on your plate tonight. The only thing you need to watch out for is that you don't consume more carbohydrates than you burn in a day.
7. Dried fruit has hardly any vitamins and minerals
The vitamin content of dried fruit may be slightly lower than normal, but dried apricots, for example, are still packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Or take a bell pepper or a carrot, which are full of vitamin A that is completely preserved during the drying process.
8. Carrots contain too much sugar
One of the most well-known fables about vegetables and fruit is that your blood sugar level skyrockets from carrots. And yes, there are indeed a lot of natural sugars in carrots, but due to the fiber in a carrot, those sugars are absorbed slowly in our body. So feel free to eat a bowl of carrots; the orange little guy is full of vitamin A (good for your eyes) and vitamin C. Bye runny nose.
9. A bell pepper contains much more vitamin C than an orange
A bell pepper indeed contains even more vitamin C than an orange, namely 190 versus 60 milligrams. Caught a cold? Then bite into a red bell pepper more often instead of having that glass of fresh juice.
