4. Don ' t drink your vegetables. Juicing removes the fiber, which has the double merit of helping you feel full and maintaining a healthy digestive system. Juices also concentrate the sugars from vegetables, increasing the risk that they ' ll spike your blood sugar.
5. Cook carefully. Vegetables are usually most nutritious when crisp-not overcooked. An exception to this recommendation and to # 4, above, is the tomato; its cancer-fighting chemical lycopene becomes more bioavailable when heat breaks down the tomato ' s cell walls or even when it is served as juice. ==================================================================
A Message to My Friends, the Die-Hard Carnivores
Of course, there are lots of people who start Atkins more than a little pleased with the fact that I certainly won ' t discourage them from eating meat, fish and fowl. I ' m a carnivore, too. But I ' m also an omnivore-meaning I eat anything that ' s healthy.
I know there are some people who simply don ' t like vegetables. Or, at least, they don ' t like the ones they ' ve eaten so far. The funny thing is that a lot of folks who do Atkins eventually find vegetables they can love. Perhaps it ' s because many people who follow the program end up trying many recipes and dishes they have never eaten before. They are making all sorts of healthy changes in their eating habits, and, in that context, sampling new foods doesn ' t seem particularly revolutionary. If you ' ve always been a grudging consumer of vegetables, I hope you ' ll become a vegetable-eating convert.
Look at the recipe section in the back of this book. Pick out a few vegetable concoctions that sound at least tolerable to your carnivorous personality. How surprised you will be if you like some of them. Then try a few more. Vegetables don ' t have to become your favorite food, but if you can lure yourself into dietary habits that put more of them on your plate than most Americans eat, you will be doing your noble, hard-working body an immense favor.
Think of all the things your body does for you. I ' m sure you ' ll agree that it ' s payback time.
================================================================== Berries Are Best!
One important lesson learned from the Tufts study previously mentioned is that, as evaluated by the Atkins Ratio, the lumping together of fruits and vegetables as being essentially equal in benefits is not true. Relatively speaking, vegetables have considerably more antioxidant value per carbohydrate gram than fruits and thus represent a much more valuable dietary choice. Even so, after the Induction phase of Atkins, you may use some of your daily carb ration to add the more valuable fruits to your menu. Berries, including blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries, are the fruits highest in antioxidant value. Berries are also lower in carbs than other fruit and are relatively low on the glycemic index scale. Moreover, the phytonutrients in certain fruits can slow pre-cancerous growths. ==================================================================
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