Lettuce Facts
A Few Interesting Lettuce Facts For You
• Lettuce is usually grown as a leafy vegetable, and is often eaten cold and raw, in salads and side dishes. In China and some other countries, lettuce is cooked before eaten, and they use the stem as well as the leaf. Lettuce, facts say, has a very mild taste, and can be combined with many other foods to make healthy dishes.
• The top lettuce-producing country is China, followed by the United States, Spain and Italy. Interestingly, the Yazidi sect in north of Iraq believe that eating lettuce is taboo.
• Two cups of romaine lettuce, facts state, have only fifteen calories, and over 143% of your RDA of Vitamin K. Lettuce also includes Vitamins A and C, folate and manganese, and many other minerals.
• Lettuce's beta-carotene and vitamin C work together to make it a very heart-healthy food. These vitamins and minerals help keep cholesterol from building up in your arteries.
• The fiber in lettuce is another element in the vegetable's arsenal against disease. Fiber can bind to salts from bile and help to take them out of your body. Then your body must make more bile, and to do this, it has to break down cholesterol. In this and other ways, lettuce helps you keep your cholesterol levels low.
• The folic acid in lettuce, facts confirm, is important to heart health, as well. It helps convert a chemical that is harmful to the body into other, non-dangerous compounds. Potassium also helps you lower blood pressure; it is just another of lettuce's healthy vitamins and minerals.
• When you are selecting lettuce for you or your family, make sure the leaves look crispy and not wilted. The head should be free of slimy or dark spots. The leaves of lettuce, facts state, should show no discoloration.
• If you wish to store your lettuce at home, make sure you wash it and dry it off before refrigerating it. Put the heads in damp cloths or a plastic bag, and place in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator.
• Here are a few ideas to help you serve lettuce in different ways:
• Make your sandwiches crunchy and add almost no calories, by slipping in a few leaves of lettuce.
• Use your imagination in creating new salad dishes with various kinds of lettuce. Add color with vegetables and experiment with the different kinds of lettuce. And add some unusual things, too, to brighten up your salad: nuts, fruits, seeds, cheese or meat, the list is endless...
• For a different type of meal, arrange chicken slices, diced vegetables and nuts on a bed of romaine lettuce, and make a bread-less, low-calorie lettuce sandwich.