http://www.care2.com/greenliving/dig-this-root-vegetables.html
Dig This: Root Vegetables
By Melissa Breyer, Senior Producer, Care2 Green Living
I’m deeply drawn to vegetables grown underground. I find them mysterious, otherworldly. Like geodes and gemstones, they come from a world that I know little of. They drink in the nutrients from dark soil and transform them into perfectly imperfect knobs and tubes of exuberant color and uncommon nutrition. They are the heart and soul of plants.
Technically, the term “root vegetables” includes only those that are either tuberous roots or taproots and include beets, cassava, carrots, horseradish, radishes, rutabagas, parsnips, salsify and turnips. Other categories of underground vegetables include: bulbs (onions, garlic), corms (celeriac, eddo, taro), rhizomes (ginger, galangal, turmeric), and tubers (potatoes and the like). That said, most people refer to the whole shebang of edible underground plants as root vegetables.
Historically, root vegetables were fare for peasants and the poor. It’s surprising that the nobility and elite didn’t hoard all of that delicious beauty for themselves. The freakish fuchsia of a beetroot and the saturated orange of a carrot seem so desirable. But for people across the globe, many with little means or the right climate for other options, root vegetables have served as an invaluable source of nutrition. As the “storage bin” for a plant’s nutrients, root vegetables are powerhouses of vitamins, phytonutrients, and complex carbohydrates. Because of their nature, they can survive cold storage and they are invaluable for winter nutrition in cold climates when little else is growing.
As it turns out, root vegetables have also been used for medicinal purposes throughout time. We know of the healing properties of garlic, ginseng and ginger, but did you know that burdock is said to promote good skin health or that fennel root is very good for the digestive tract? The list of roots and their remedies is long and impressive.
In general, root vegetables have no fat and are low in calories. They can be an excellent source of protein, and their phytonutrients are proven to have extraordinary health benefits. The phytonutrients include antioxidants which fight free radicals in our bodies. The phytonutrients are associated with the color of the vegetable, and the more intense a vegetable’s color is, the more phytonutrients it contains. So those intensely red beets? Chock full of healthy antioxidants. Bright orange carrots good for the eyes? A glass of carrot juice contains about 45,000 IU of vitamin A. That’s gotta be good for something!
What makes root vegetables so terrific can also occasionally also be their undoing. Since roots vegetables are storage organs for the plants they support, they are packed full of energy in the form of carbohydrates (by way of fiber, sugar and starch). Now this is good for us as we require carbohydrates for our own energy, but foods with a high starch content rate high on the Glycemic Index (GI), which measures how fast the carbohydrate of a particular food is converted to glucose and enters the bloodstream. The higher the number on the GI, the quicker the absorption of sugar is resulting in a sharp increase in blood sugar. Cooking vegetables can sometimes increase their glycemic rating, and most roots require cooking.
Root vegetables that have a medium rating on the GI include sweet potatoes, boiled potatoes, yams, onions, beets and raw carrots. Those that get a high ranking include baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, parsnips, cooked carrots and rutabagas. If you are interested in finding out specific GI ratings for food items, you can search the database at Glycemic Index. In addition, root vegetables’ dearth of fat makes them a good match for fatty ingredients. Make sure not to counter the salubrious nature of roots with too much fat. Where to start? With one of Care2’s healthy root recipes!
Savory Braised Turnips and Carrots
For comprehensive information and detailed nutrition facts, see this primer on root vegetables from Whole Foods Market.
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11 comments
add your comment »This is an occasion to dust of the juicer & get going. Thank you
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why is this inappropriate?
Try this fabulous, tasty and very healthy juice...
1 medium beetroot (raw)
1 or 2 carrots
small piece of ginger (1/2 inch cube)
green apple
Peel all vegetables and cut into pieces suitable for the juicer.
This is so good both summer and winter... you will wonder why you have never tried it before !!
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I love roots
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why is this inappropriate?
EEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKK1111111111 AAAAAAKKKKKKKKK. NEVER WASH YOUR POTATOES!!
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EEK! ACK! Please - Don't peel your carrots!!! Or your potatoes. Just scrub them well. Most of the nutrients live in the skin.
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roots are great foods.. Please remember that they(roots) are the way the plant takes in its food. That also means chemicals and pesticides as wells as its food. Organic root foods are the best just because of the nature of the plant.
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yum, I just baked beets tonight. I've been making lots of soups for my 16 month old twins from root veggies, mostly carrots and sweet potatoes, and they LOVE them - it's really cute to watch them try to eat soup with a spoon (I make it thick so they can scoop it up with either a spoon or their chubby little hands).
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Diana, I think you mean allotments not elopments. - That is public land that has been divided up and is rented out to people who would like to cultivate the land but lack the space where they live. I live in Manchester England, and my nextdoor neighbour (when he was alive), kept an allotment, and he'd always give us his surplus - cabbage, tomatoes, cauliflower, lettuces, beets. Until you taste a vegetable that has just been freshly dug up, you'll never know how flavourful they should actually be!
I'm from Canada originally, and I don't know how feasible it would be to have something like that over there. People have much bigger yards over there anyway, and you'd probably need a car to get to any allotment they might make, unless they were to set aside some areas in local parks.
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Nothing like a simple baked sweet potato. Healthy and tasty all by itself.
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My grand mother sid Beatroots were good for the Blood, hey they are. In England after WW.II root veges were usserly the most plentyfull in the winter out side of Good old Brussle sprouts. Most houses had veggy gardens and elopments. somthing that modern day Canada neads to do. To have elopments accesable to those who don't have Cars.
Diana Fry
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