Dear reader,
Nine months ago I did a short introduction related to how vegetables are categorized. This month I intend to write a little bit about another important kind of vegetables, i.e, leaves vegetables. 🙂
As explained in a previous article, when referring to vegetables, leaves are the edible leaves of a plant.
“Nearly one thousand species of plants with edible leaves are known. Leaves vegetables most often come from short-lived herbaceous plants, such as lettuce and spinach. Woody plants of various species also provide edible leaves.
The leaves of many fodder crops are also edible for humans, but are usually only eaten under famine conditions. Examples include alfalfa, clover, most grasses, including wheat and barley. These plants are often much more prolific than traditional leaves vegetables, but exploitation of their rich nutrition is difficult, due to their high fiber content. This can be overcome by further processing such as drying and grinding into powder or pulping and pressing for juice.
Leaves vegetables contain many typical plant nutrients, but since they are photosynthetic tissues, their vitamin K levels are particularly notable. Phylloquinone, the most common form of the vitamin, is directly involved in photosynthesis. They are typically low in calories and fat, and high in protein per calorie, dietary fiber, vitamin C, pro-vitamin A carotenoids, folate, manganese and, as already mentioned, vitamin K.” (Leaf Vegetable)
That’s all for today! I hope you have found this short article useful and interesting. Stay tuned for more articles about vegetables next year, please!
Best Regards from The Land of Cabbage (and Broccoli too) 😉 ,
Wilson
Works Cited
“Leaf Vegetable.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Oct. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_vegetable.
Wilson Pardi Junior's Blog 