Finish Your Vegetables

Welcome back to Medical Department Store’s blog about Fruits and Vegetables Month.  Today, we’ll talk about what vegetables are, what foods are considered vegetables and the healthy benefits of eating them.

From our last blog, it’s hard to tell the difference between what’s truly a fruit and vegetable. A vegetable is considered the edible part of a plant that can be eaten raw or cooked. Vegetables are organized into five groups:

• Dark green
• Starchy
• Red and orange vegetables
• Beans and peas
• Other vegetables

There are more vegetables than fruits. Some of your more common vegetables include corn, asparagus, broccoli, rhubarb, potatoes, peas, beans, onion, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, cabbage, zucchini, spinach, lettuce, pumpkin, peppers and horseradish. Vegetables can act as great snack replacements instead of eating salty snacks like pretzels, and we encourage you to eat chips with salsa instead of cheese dip. Make sure to keep vegetables out so you can see them; you’ll tend to eat them more often than other fatty foods.

Like fruits, vegetables are recommended in certain amounts to eat in order to maintain a healthy diet.  Based on gender and age, it may be recommended to eat different amounts of vegetables as well.  When you’re younger one cup of vegetables is recommended, but when you get to be 50+ years old it turns into two and half to three cups, with 30 minutes of physical activity per day.

You’ll have to experiment with vegetables and other key food groups.  Sometimes green beans or asparagus go great with steak, and tomatoes go great with a BLT. Not to say you can’t eat vegetables alone or blend it into a drink, but you can pair vegetables with bigger main course meals too.

Medical Department Store doesn’t sell vegetables at the local market, but we continue to promote eating and having a healthy diet.  Take a look at our featured products or our full online catalog today. Please contact us with any questions you may have!