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Raw Food SpecialistsThe Health Benefits Of Cabbage

While the health benefits of cabbage and other fruits and vegetables are numerous, it is important to eat a variety of foods every day.

The healthy heart cabbage diet or the ?cabbage soup diet? is one of the fad diets that the American Heart Association and other public health organizations warn against. There are many reasons for these warnings, depending on which diet one is attempting to follow. The healthy heart cabbage diet has many flaws.

First, let?s look at what a healthy diet should include. The basic building blocks for a healthy diet are protein, carbohydrates and fat. Nutritionists and other experts have modified these basic blocks somewhat.

Lean protein, complex carbohydrates and unsaturated fats should all be included in a balanced healthy diet and following this type of diet regularly while increasing your level of physical activity is the only healthy way to achieve long term control of your weight.

Unsaturated fats are those found in olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, salmon and tuna. In the healthiest diet, less than 30% of the daily caloric intake should come from fat, about 30% should come from lean protein and about 40% should come from complex carbohydrates, which include fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The health benefits of cabbage and other vegetables are numerous, but they alone do not provide all of the building blocks that the human body needs to stay healthy.

Drawbacks of the Cabbage Diet

The guidelines for the healthy heart cabbage diet begin with a recipe for cabbage soup. The ingredients include green onions, green peppers, diced tomatoes, celery, onion soup mix, bouillon cubes and a head of cabbage. The heart healthy benefits of cabbage soup by itself are questionable, at best.

The sodium content is too high to be considered healthful for most anyone, but particularly for someone with blood pressure problems or a tendency towards fluid retention, problems often found in the overweight and those with heart problems.

While one of the health benefits of cabbage, and many other vegetables, is as a natural diuretic, which helps the body get rid of excess fluids and salts, adding all of the salt found in the bouillon and the onion soup mix would counteract the diuretic effect of the cabbage and other vegetables.

On the first day of the ?healthy? heart cabbage diet, participants are supposed to eat all of the fruit they want (except for bananas) and the soup in unlimited quantities. The missing blocks are protein and fat. Adults need to eat about 60 grams of protein per day.

Most fruits and vegetables contain less than 1 gram, so if you were following this diet, you would need to eat 60 or more servings of fruit and soup to get the necessary protein for that day. The health benefits of cabbage and other fruits and vegetables are not related to their protein content.

If you are overweight, you could probably go without the fat for one day, but extremely low-fat diets are not filling, not advisable for permanent weight control and many of the organs, including the brain, need dietary fat to function effectively.

On the second day of the healthy heart cabbage diet, the menu calls for unlimited quantities of fresh, raw or cooked vegetables, unlimited quantities of the soup and a baked potato with butter for dinner. So, you added a little fat, but butter or margarine is not the healthiest types of fat. Protein is missing for the second day in a row.

The third day of the healthy heart cabbage diet is again missing protein and fat. The fourth day is not much better, but for the first time fat free dairy is mentioned.

The health benefits of cabbage and other fruits and vegetables do not usually include high calcium content (except for broccoli and spinach which are good sources). Calcium is necessary to prevent osteoporosis, among other things. Calcium supplements alone would not correct the lack of calcium in this diet; too many other nutrients are needed for the body to effectively absorb the calcium.

One of the first things that you would notice if you followed the healthy heart cabbage diet up to this point would be a lack of energy. Although the body uses complex carbohydrates for energy and complex carbohydrates are among the health benefits of cabbage and other vegetables, without adequate amounts of protein and fat, you would be tired and irritable.

As the healthy heart cabbage diet progresses, it does not get much better. Hopefully, by now, you understand that this is not a healthy balanced diet.

Diets like the healthy heart cabbage diet can result in nutritional deficiencies.

The body needs a variety of compounds to function efficiently, effectively and healthfully. Our dietary needs are not limited to isolated vitamins and minerals. We also need amino acids, proteins, fiber, antioxidants, flavonoids, a little bit of fat and probably other components that have yet to be identified.

Cabbage, alone, can only provide a few of these nutrients. When compared to other vegetables, the nutritional content and thus the health benefits of cabbage are not adequate. However, cabbage is a good source of vitamin C and dietary fiber and including it as a part of a healthy diet is fine.

The Cabbage Soup Diet or the healthy heart cabbage diet is supposedly used by pre-surgical heart patients in order to get their weight down quickly. Allegedly, you can lose 10-17 pounds in seven days. It is doubtful that any health care professional would suggest this diet for anyone and particularly not for a heart patient.

In order to achieve long term weight loss, physical activity is of utmost importance. Physical inactivity is a major risk factor for developing heart disease.

The health benefits of cabbage and other fruits and vegetables may include a reduced risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Whole Food Supplements

Public health organizations recommend 5-10 servings of fruits and vegetables per day in a variety of colors. Each different color provides different flavonoids, some of which may prevent cancer, most of which are antioxidants and some that can reduce unhealthy levels of cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

If you want the health benefits of cabbage and other vegetables, a whole food supplement is more likely to provide them than other nutritional supplements.

Although cabbage is healthy, you'd get many more benefits by taking it with a combination of other potent vegetables and fruits, such as broccoli, spinach, carrots, apples, oranges, pineapples, cherries, and more.

Whole food supplements, arguably the most popular being Juice Plus+?, are typically whole vegetable in dehydrated form and may help fill in the gaps on days when you don?t get your recommended number of servings. Which, for many of us, is most days.

The lesson here is to not rely too much on one food source, but to introduce a wide variety of fruits and veggies into your diet, in addition to protein sources.

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