Vegetables

Vegetables, like fruit, are super foods!  They have lots of water and fibre which work together to keep you healthy.  Did you know - you are almost 80% water so it makes sense to eat lots of foods that have water!  Vegetables also have lots of fibre, which you cannot digest but it is still very important.  Fibre helps to bulk up the food you eat and makes sure that everything moves through your digestive system at a regular pace.  If you eat a lot of processed foods, you may not be eating a lot of fibre which means that you may be constipated (you may find it difficult to have a poo) and there may be a build up of gas, which can be very smelly!  You can see why it’s a good idea for everyone to eat fresh fruit!

Vegetables have lots of vitamins and minerals.  You don’t need much of these to keep you healthy but you would be very ill without them and it is best to get them from the food you eat. You cannot store a lot of these in your body so you need to eat vegetables and fruit every day to make sure you have enough to keep your body healthy and working the way it should!

Each of the vitamins and minerals you eat has a special job to do. Check out the table (Table 1) to see which vegetables have which vitamins and what they do! 

Vitamins come in two types – fat soluble and water soluble.

• Fat soluble vitamins are stored in your liver and in the fatty tissue in your body.  They just hang around until your body needs them, but for different lengths of time so you still need to replace them, just not as often.  Vitamins A, D, E & K are the fat soluble vitamins.
   
• The water soluble vitamins are different – they aren’t stored in your body, they go to your bloodstream and get excreted if they are not used.  You have to replace these vitamins much more often to make sure your body has enough all of the time.  These vitamins are the ‘B group’ vitamins – B1 (thiamin); B2 (riboflavin); B6; B12, niacin; Folic acid, biotin, pantothenic acid - and Vitamin C.

Vegetables also have very bright colours – they are red, yellow, orange and lots of different shades of green.  These look great in your dinner and they all help you to stay healthy, but did you know that the dark green vegetables and the orange ones are the best?  The bright colours you see in vegetables are make by phyto-chemicals (you say it – ‘fight-o-chemicals’).  Phytochemicals work with vitamins and minerals to keep your body healthy so remember to eat lots of colourful vegetables.

There are lots of other great things in vegetables that work to keep you healthy.  Red vegetables like peppers contain lots of lycopene (‘lie-co-pene’) while orange vegetables like carrots have lots of carotenoids (‘car-ot-en-oids’).  Carotenoids aren’t just in orange veggies though – you can find them in green vegetables like spinach, broccoli and some types of cabbage too!  Your body makes carotenoids into vitamin A so its good to eat lots!

Dark green leafy vegetables are packed with good things.  They have carotenoids, indoles (‘in-doles’) and a chemical call lutein (‘loo-teen’), which helps to keep your eyes healthy!

Vegetables also contain lots of minerals, like iron and magnesium.  Your body needs a total of 16 different minerals and you need to get them from the food you eat every day.   You will know some of the names of these minerals: Calcium, chloride, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and sulphur!

	VITAMIN			WHAT IT DOES				WHERE YOU FIND IT (vegetables)
		A			Helps you to see in the dark! Helps you to see colour Keeps your teeth and gums healthy				Carrots Spinach Tomatoes
		B1 B2 B6 B12 Niacin Folic acid Biotin Pantothenic acid			B vitamins help your body to burn up fat from the food you eat or the fat that is stored in your body – they help your body to use the food you eat to give you energy! B vitamins also help to make red blood cells that carry oxygen to all the different clls in your body – they really are very important in keeping you healthy!				Green leafy vegetables
		C			Helps to heal cuts Keeps your teeth, gums and muscles healthy Helps to fight infection				Broccoli Cabbage Peppers Potatoes Spinach Tomatoes
		E			Protects your lungs from pollution Keeps your eyes, skin and liver healthy Helps to make red blood cells				Green leafy vegetables
		K			Your body absolutely needs this vitamin to make sure your blood clots!				Green leafy vegetables

Did you know?
The B group vitamins you find in green leafy vegetables help your body to make protein and give you energy?

Can you see how important green leafy vegetables are in your diet?