Leafy Vegetables is Good Food for Constipation

I am talking about the most unpopular food for constipation, I believe.

Despite the obvious goodness of consuming lettuce, spinach, mustard green, chives, parsley, cilantro etc etc scary greenness...Many sufferers of constipation are just not into green vegetables.

Unlike our ancestors who survived on diet of mainly vegetables.

My deceased grandmother remembered during her younger days, vegetables and sweet potatoes were daily affair. She ate chicken once a year.

Therefore the older generation rightly believe there is less constipation when they stick to their traditional diet.

Now we have fully transitioned from mostly vegetables to mostly meat diet. Gone are the days my mother describes as " the days you taste the food you like ( meat ), you also taste the food you dislike ( veges ) - in order to know life."

Nowadays people don't have to eat all the greens. People eat greens of the highest dietary fiber based on nutritional charts. There are greens packed into convenient tablet/powder/liquid form. This, is the era of super food - alfalfa, chlorophyll, spirulina, wheatgrass extracts in the finest quality for people who can afford them. If you belong to this privileged category, I have nothing to say about you not munching your vegetables.

People who cannot afford 200 dollars to buy super vegetable substitutes, have to be content with 2 dollars real vegetables as one of the food for constipation.

When people complained that vegetables does not help with their constipation, I began to wonder if:

1. Have they really taken enough fiber? For example, 200 g lettuce gives about 2g fiber - that makes a full plate. Just to illustrate the point, to satisfy the body's daily need of fiber means a person has to eat 10 plates of lettuce! Diet wise, of course we cannot be so monotonous to chew only lettuce. We eat a variety of fiber sources with vegetables to meet this quota.

When a person's vegetables are raw salad dish, it seems to be a lot. Actually, it's not. Blanch the same amount of salad dish and watch how much it shrinks, you get a more accurate picture.

So Dr.Atkinson is smart to add psyllium husks on salads. He knows... ( winks )

Patients of hypothyroidism should be careful with some high fiber vegetables that could enlarge their thyroid glands when eaten raw. They should cook these goitrogenic vegetables. Examples are cabbage, collard, kale and turnip green.

2. Fiber is not the cause of their constipation. Sometimes, it could be a matter of getting out of sedentary lifestyle by doing walking exercise.

3. There are illnesses involved.

4. Complications from medications.

5. Eating salads with lots of cheese with beef pastrami, ham or bacon and forget about it the next day. lol

6. Pregnancy. Pregnant women should eat lots of vegetables not only as a food for constipation but also as a natural source of folic acid to prevent birth defects. However, vegetable diet is only part of the regime to combat constipating hormones.

7. Amazingly, they are under the illusion vegetables is the panacea to constipation.

8. They think that oats, prunes and avocados are vegetables.

9. They eat a lot of vegetables - potatoes without jackets and baked beans. lol

All of us have to eat a balanced diet according to the food pyramid for the sake of overall health. Vegetables is part and parcel of the pyramid. It's up to you to make the pyramid complete - or incomplete. Besides, you've nothing to lose to take out some fresh water cress the fridge when you feel constipated.

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