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I suppose it depends on your sense of humor, but I find the
latest news about salad—you know, the kind that is mostly composed of lettuce—to
be positively amusing.
It turns out that salad is a waste. I suppose
it’s better than kale, which some believe carries more than a fair share of
heavy metal poisons.
Tamar Haspel brings us the good (or bad) news, depending on
your taste:
There’s
one food, though, that has almost nothing going for it. It occupies precious
crop acreage, requires fossil fuels to be shipped, refrigerated, around the
world, and adds nothing but crunch to the plate.
It’s
salad, and here are three main reasons why we need to rethink it.
Salad
vegetables are pitifully low in nutrition.
The biggest thing wrong with salads is lettuce, and the biggest thing wrong
with lettuce is that it’s a leafy-green waste of resources.
How little nutrition does salad provide? Glad you asked:
One of
the people I heard from about nutrition is organic consultant Charles Benbrook.
He and colleague Donald Davis developed a nutrient quality index — a way to
rate foods based on how much of 27 nutrients they contain per 100 calories.
Four of the five lowest-ranking foods (by serving size) are salad ingredients:
cucumbers, radishes, lettuce and celery. (The fifth is eggplant.)
And, nutritionally salad has next to no real value:
Those
foods’ nutritional profile can be partly explained by one simple fact: They’re
almost all water. Although water figures prominently in just about every
vegetable (the sweet potato, one of the least watery, is 77 percent), those
four salad vegetables top the list at 95 to 97 percent water. A head of iceberg
lettuce has the same water content as a bottle of Evian (1-liter size: 96
percent water, 4 percent bottle) and is only marginally more nutritious.
And, salad is also a waste of money:
The
corollary to the nutrition problem is the expense problem. The makings of a
green salad — say, a head of lettuce, a cucumber and a bunch of radishes — cost
about $3 at my supermarket. For that, I could buy more than two pounds of
broccoli, sweet potatoes or just about any frozen vegetable going, any of which
would make for a much more nutritious side dish to my roast chicken.
Lettuce
is a vehicle to transport refrigerated water from farm to table. When we switch
to vegetables that are twice as nutritious — like those collards or tomatoes or
green beans — not only do we free up half the acres now growing lettuce, we cut
back on the fossil fuels and other resources needed for transport and storage.
The moral of the story, via Haspel, is this:
Save the planet, skip the salad.
7 comments:
They left out the bit about it increasing fiber (CTRL+F = 0 results).
Lots of people need more fiber and it's a simple way to obtain it.
It is almost devoid of nutrition,but that's why people eat it.
Water plus bulk = full stomach = reduced weight. Maybe.
What they're moving toward is feeding you People Chow.
The elite want to choose what you eat, either by shaming or regulation or both.
Lancet had an article some 10 years ago describing exactly that.
All food is offensive to the planet because it sustains human life, which is bad, unless you're among the elite.
Meat is bad. Lettuce is bad, etc etc.
I am skeptical when these articles come out.
Or rather, suspicious.
Why now? Why this food?
I have begun assuming their intentions are bad, and work from there.
For what it's worth, I find a certain amount of amusement value in these stories. As far as I can tell, the errors of those who have been trying to control diets have largely been discredited. But the mix of environmental consciousness with a quasi-religious attitude toward food consumption is characteristic of those who attend the Church of the Liberal Pieties.
"quasi-religious attitude toward food consumption""
Exactly.
As Emile Cammaerts said of GK Chesterton in 'The Laughing Prophet':
The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.
I'd say we are hardwired for belief, but that's a bit too close to the Darwinian neurobiology Just So explanations for me.
Yup Pogo, I try to eat salad to lose weight. Not only roughage, but more complex carbs to level off the sugar high and lows. Put a good source of protein into theat salad, hard eggs, chicken, etc. A high quality oil dressing, do a bit of resistance training, and I have been able to keep my weight within a 7 pound radius. Not bad for an older balding guy!
Lettuce is also low in fiber.
Cabbage is much better. Spinach too.
I wonder if Kael could be raised without those bad stuff.
I personally love collared greens with hamhocks and bacon, but I can't eat that because I believe pigs are too intelligent and emotionally complicated to be killed. Pigs are our brothers and sisters. They must be spared.
Obviously, we need more "planning". Planned Parenthood. Planned Intercourse. Planned Retirement. Anything to reduce the problem set.
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