Lettuce
Lettuce is one of the staples of many diets. If you have a salad before lunch and dinner, it helps to make you feel full while consuming very few carbs or calories. A half cup of lettuce only has .5g of net carbs in it. On the other hand, lettuce has very few nutrients in it, so make sure you do not live on lettuce alone!
CabbageCabbage is a bit higher in carb counts - 1.1g per half cup. However, the great texture of cabbage means it's great for being a "wrap" - like wrapping up sandwich meats and other items. I love cabbage with corned beef. It's high in Vitamin C, tho if you cook it for a long time (a la corned beef and cabbage) you leach out most of the vitamins into the water.
KaleKale is a leafy veggie related to the cabbage. It's got a TON of Vitamin A and Vitamin K, plus almost a full amount of Vitamin C as well for a cup. You get about 6g of net carbs for that cup. It's well worth that!
SpinachSpinach is one of nature's perfect foods. It's no wonder that Popeye was addicted to the stuff! It only has .2g per half cup of carbs. That's barely on the scale! It is jam-packed with nutrients. It's got beta-carotene, vitamin K, folic acid, magnesium and much more. Eat your spinach!
Bok Choy This leafy vegetable is also called "Chinese Cabbage". It is really healthy for you, with almost half of your daily requirements of Vitamin A and Vitamin C. Great in stir fry, of course! Bok Choy only has .7g of net carbs per half cup.
Broccoli Cauliflower Nutrition Information
Broccoli and Cauliflower certainly look similar, though one is white and one is green. Did you know that in essence they're the exact same plant?
Broccoli has 1.7g of carbs per half cup, while cauliflower has 1.5g per half cup. They are high in vitamin C and are good for fiber too.
In essence, cauliflower was developed over many years by growing broccoli away from the sun. In fact if you grow your own cauliflower at home, one of the steps is to cover it up to bleach the top area.
Both of these plants are directly related to the cabbage plant. Many people are sensitive to chemicals in this family of plants and get gas when they eat too much of them.
There are a lot of great recipes for broccoli and cauliflower. They do very well as a creamy soup. You can steam them for fresh flavor, or mix them into a stew.
Corn on a Cob
Corn and Corn on a Cob are generally very sweet. Corn is naturally full of sugar. It was deliberately bred by people in Mexico back around 7,000 years ago to provide quick energy. It was even at the first Thanksgiving, as the American Indians had come to rely on this food. How well do corn and corn on a cob fit into a healthy diet?
First, the basic information on corn. Corn is a vegetable, and it grows on a stalk. Most of us have seen photos of fields of corn - tall, green stalks with the corn growing on a cob within a green husk. They sell those husk-corn in the supermarket in the summer. I remember many summers of husking corn cobs for my mom to cook for us.
The reason we all love corn is that it is VERY sweet and full of sugar :). A half cup of corn has 14.1g of carbs in it! It has hardly ANY fiber. Compare that say with broccoli which has a lot of fiber and only 1.7g of sugar. You get about this same amount from baby corn too. If anything it's a bit sweeter.
If you go by the ear - i.e. corn on the cob - you get about 17.1g of carbs per ear. You do get some nutrition in here, of course. This includes:
Thiamine - 13%
Folate - 8%
Vitamin C - 8%
Phosphorus - 7%
Magnesium - 6%
Niacin - 6%
Now, of course, if you're on a maintenance level in low carb, eating corn isn't out of the question. If you are currently at 60g a day as your daily level, then 17.1g fits into that. If you had corn on the cob with 2 burgers without a bun as your dinner, with a pickle and a bunch of black olives, that would stll be under 20g. You could have another 20g for lunch and breakfast and still be within your daily limit.
However, if you're actively trying to lose a lot of weight and are down in the 20g or 30g per day level, you can see how corn would blow out your entire daily amount of sugar. Still, even then, if everything else you ate that day was pretty much zero carb, it could be done. You just have to ask yourself how much you want that sugary corn, and plan accordingly
Zucchini Information
It's funny how we decide to give different vegetables different names. How come apples of all shapes and sizes are apples - but we have cucumbers, green squash and zucchinis?
First off, all squash are of course related, including yellow squash, butternut squash, etc. We're just talking about the green ones here. The main green squash that you see are the cucumber and zucchini. All other green squash are then lumped into a descriptive category of ... green squash.
CUCUMBERS
I love cucumbers! My favorite recipe involves cutting them into half moon slices and soaking them in soy sauce, vinegar, etc. Not only that, but they have only 1.8g carbs per 1/2 cup. Be sure to include cukes on your salads, as a snack, whenever you can.
ZUCCHINI
Zucchini are great for you too. They have 3.3g per 1/2 cup, so slightly more, but still really low carb and full of nutrition. Zucchini are great when they're grilled up and served with steak or grilled chicken or seafood.
GREEN SQUASH
Really, green squash usually refers to zucchini, but it can refer to other squash that happen to be green in color. Depending on the variety, they would have around 3g per 1/2 cup.
Free Forum Hosting
Important Announcement
Prev Message
