Category Archives: Vegetables

Tips to Avoid Foodborne Illness From Leafy Greens #FoodborneIllness #LeafyGreens

Posted on June 9, 2022 | 1 comment
Not sure if this is chicken or tuna salad with walnuts and grapes

Periodically there are outbreaks of illness caused by eating contaminated leafy greens. The contaminants are usually bacteria such as E coli and Salmonella. The illness is typically diarrhea, sometimes with belly cramps, nausea, and vomiting. And rare deaths.

Cathe Friedrich published an interesting article about this phenomenon. Here are a few bullet points (I haven’t independently verified):

  • Leafy greens such as lettuce are linked to 22% of food poisoning outbreaks over over the last 10 years
  • The riskiest leafy green is bagged, ready-to-serve lettuce

A few ways to avoid foodborne illness:

  • Avoid pre-packaged leafy greens
  • Avoid sprouts
  • Keep the produce refrigerated and dry
  • Consume before the expiration date

Click for leafy green food safety tips from the Canadian government.

Click for a harrowing story at Consumer Reports about E coli poisoning from romaine lettuce.

Consumer Reports article on the safest ways to eat salad.

Steve Parker, M.D.

h/t Jan at The Low Carb Diabetic

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Posted in Recipes, Vegetables

Cabbage: A Natural Laxative

Posted on October 26, 2015 | 2 comments

There’s something about cabbage…

I spent 30 minutes surfing the ‘Net to find out why cabbage soup can help fight constipation and even cause diarrhea. The answer is raffinose.

Raffinose is sometimes called a fiber but more often is characterized as a trisaccharide, oligosaccharide, or complex carbohydrate. It’s all four.

A typical bowl of cabbage soup has three grams of fiber. If you eat two bowls, that’s six grams, still not all that much, but can predictably cause loose stools or diarrhea in  many folks because of a particular type of fiber: raffinose.

The thing about raffinose is that it passes through the small intestine undigested because we lack the enzyme alpha-galactosidase. When raffinose hits the colon, bacteria start digesting it (i.e., fermenting it), potentially leading to gas, bloating, and/or diarrhea. If your “dose” of raffinose is small enough, you won’t have any symptoms. To use cabbage soup as a constipation preventative or remedy, you have to experiment to see what dose works for you.

Raffinose is also found in beans and cruciferous vegetables like brussels sprouts and cauliflower

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: Ever heard of Beano? The active ingredient is the enzyme alpha-galactosidase. It breaks down raffinose in the small intestine, to simple sugars we can absorb.

PPS: Raffinose is one of the oligosaccharides to avoid if you’re on a low FODMAPs diet.

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Posted in Vegetables

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Fruits and Vegetables May Increase Lifespan, Decrease Cancer and Heart Disease

Posted on May 22, 2014 | 2 comments

MedPageToday has some of the details.  A quote:

The largest benefits were seen in people who ate seven or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day compared with those who ate less than one serving, with the higher level of consumption associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality (hazard ratio 0.67; 95% CI 0.58-0.78), lead researcher Oyinlola Oyebode of University College London, and colleagues, reported online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

diabetic diet, paleobetic diet, low-carb diet

Prepping for bacon brussels sprouts 

The population under study was English. In addition to lower risk of death, the heavy fruit and vegetable consumers had lower rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Click for the actual research report.

If seven servings a day seems like a lot, note that a typical serving is only half a cup. You’ll get those with the Paleobetic Diet.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Posted in Fruit, Heart Disease, Longevity, Vegetables

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