12 Steps to Whole Foods

Reaping a Gardener’s Rewards
Why Should I Grow and Eat Onions and Garlic?
Onions and garlic, which have similar properties, add flavor to many or most of the salads (Chapter 2) and
dressings (Chapter 3), main dishes (Chapter 6), and sauces and dips (Chapter 9) in this book. Therefore, I
provide no specifically “onion” or “garlic” recipes in this chapter. Virtually every culture on earth prizes onions
and garlic for the way they flavor cuisine beautifully. But they are also power foods.
Because onions give such nourishment to your immune system and are easy to grow in almost any climate, I
recommend dedicating a few garden squares to your favorite types: green (good for salads and garnishes), red
(colorful addition to many dishes), yellow (great for cooking), or white (perfect for salsa) onions. You may not
know that yellow onions have much higher levels of flavonoids than white. As a class, onions also are a good
source of fiber, potassium, phosphorus, copper, manganese and, molybdenum, as well as vitamins B6 and B9
(folate).
Onions are also rich in the trace mineral chromium, plus vitamin C and flavonoids including quercetin, which
combine with other compounds in a virtually perfect package to be very effective against the many
inflammatory diseases that plague Americans (asthma, arthritis, and many others). Both onions and garlic are
in the allium family, and onions’ compound allyl propyl disulphide lowers blood sugar, an important
consideration for diabetics. The more onions clinical test subjects ate, the lower their blood glucose levels.
Chromium also aids in blood sugar levels, and Americans are sometimes chromium deficient, possibly because
eating white flour/sugar and not exercising deplete levels of this mineral. Onions are also one of the highest
known cholesterol- and blood-pressure lowering plant foods.
The antioxidant quercitin protects against colorectal and many other cancers according to a number of studies,
and other researchers have found that a newly isolated compound in onions (GPCS) inhibits bone breakdown
and performs similarly to anti-osteoporosis drugs. So eat onions abundantly, since onion breath is a much less
serious side effect than the results of bone loss and the side effects of bone-loss drugs.
You can store onions and garlic very well for a few months at a time in the right conditions: a cool, dark, dry
place such as cold storage or a hole in the ground built against an outside wall. Store them away from potatoes,
however, as onions will spoil more rapidly if exposed to potatoes’ ethylene gas and moisture.
Why Should I Grow and Eat Spinach?
Spinach is easy to grow, a great crop for spring and fall. Unfortunately, it bolts easily when hot weather hits, so
plant it very early. Plant in the fall and you will find it wintering over and then exploding with new growth
early the next spring. If you have spinach you won’t be able to use before it goes bad, freeze it for use in green
smoothies.
One cup of cooked spinach contains more than the daily recommended allowance of vitamins K, A, and C,
as well as manganese, folate, magnesium, and iron. Various studies have linked 13 different anti-cancer
compounds found in spinach to protection against stomach, skin, breast, colon, prostate, and ovarian cancers.
Anti-inflammatory properties are preventative of arthritis and asthma, and other studies show spinach
consumption wards off osteoporosis and heart disease risks.
The Chicago Health and Aging Project found that elderly people eating three daily servings of green and
yellow vegetables had 40% less cognitive decline than people who ate fewer than one serving. Unsurprisingly,
green leafy vegetables were correlated most highly to good mental function.
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw 12 Steps to Whole Foods 127