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Page 57
| source of protein. Avocados are easily digested, making them an ideal food for people recovering from surgery or for the very sick. |
| Other nutritious vegetables to eat include peas, string beans, zucchini, summer and winter squashes, eggplant, Swiss chard, and artichokes (both globe and rooted sunchoke). Artichokes are rich in nutrients that protect the liver. Eat all these vegetables raw or cooked, either whole, shredded, juiced, or in a soup broth. Soups or fresh juices are best for those in recovery. |
| Wild Greens and Flowers |
| Be sure to eat chlorophyll-rich dark leafy greens every dayboth raw and cooked. Try to include wild greens like dandelion, chickweed, watercress, mustard greens, and my favorite green, nettles. Raw spinach and parsley are good sources of glutathione and chlorophyll. Parsley is also rich in polyactylenes, which block the formation of tumor-promoting prostaglandins. Use romaine lettuce, arugula, escarole, chicory, and watercress in salad and forget about eating iceberg lettuce, which has no nutritional value at all. Eating watercress releases phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC), which can prevent nicotine-induced lung cancer. PEITC appears to partially block the metabolic activation of the tobacco-specific lung carcinogen NNK. In addition to water-cress, other foods that contain similar compounds include Chinese cabbage (also called napa cabbage) and turnips. |
| Another wonderful wild green that can be added to your salad is purslane. This plant is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants, such as vitamins E, C, and K, beta-carotene, glutathione, and psoralens. Psoralens are naturally occurring tricyclic furocoumarins that act as antioxidants and are found in other plants such as celery, parsley, parsnips, and figs. |
| Eat cooked greens such as kale, collard greens, mustard greens, and broccoli rabe. Learn to love the taste of bitter greens because they detoxify the liver. Of the wild greens, dandelion and nettles are both delicious sautéed with garlic. They are two of the most nutritious foods we can eat and they are both common weeds that grow everywhere. Another wild green, usually available only in the spring, is the young fiddlehead fern. |
| Dandelion root, which can be eaten as a food or used in tea, has shown antitumor effects in mammary carcinoma in mice, due to a cytolytic activation |
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