Top 10 Healthiest Vegetables You Must Eat

Hello Health Champions. What are the top 10  healthiest vegetables that you can eat? Well,  

number 10 on the list is garlic. Garlic has been  used for thousands of years because of its very  

broad medicinal properties and to this day a lot  of people will eat extra garlic whenever they need  

an immune boost and I certainly eat a lot of  garlic not necessarily for those reasons but  

I just love garlic and there's a compound in  garlic called allicin that gives garlic its  

characteristics the smell and the taste but also a  lot of its health benefits but allicin is only one  

of 33 sulfur containing compounds in garlic and  a lot of plant food a lot of vegetables that are  

known to give health benefits and people reverse  diseases like multiple sclerosis that's because  

they choose vegetables that are very often high  in these sulfur compounds and one more compound  

is called cysteine and if you've heard of n  acetyl cysteine or NAC which is a very popular  

supplement it is because this cysteine gets  converted into glutathione which is the body's  

number one antioxidant and one of the main ways to  detoxify and clean the body. Of course garlic also  

has a bunch of vitamins and minerals but again  you're not going to eat pounds worth of the stuff  

so you're probably not going to rely on garlic  for that but like I mentioned the biggest reason I  

eat it is that it's delicious I put garlic in just  about everything and you can eat it raw or cooked.  

Now a lot of people will prefer it cooked because  they can eat more and it's a little milder but the  

allicin is mostly active when the garlic is fresh  and undisturbed and raw so it might be a good idea  

to eat some raw and some cooked. And then of  course there are some side effects to garlic  

namely body odor but it also has been known to  keep away vampires and mosquitoes. Number nine  

is onion which is in the same family as garlic  they contain sulfur, cysteine that gets converted  

to glutathione. They both have lots of vitamins  and minerals and that's one of the main reasons  

we want to eat plenty of vegetables is vitamins  and minerals especially minerals we get primarily  

from large amounts of vegetables. Onion has about  seven and a half grams of carbohydrate, net carbs  

per hundred, so that's the highest amount of carbs  of any vegetable I've included on the top ten and  

why do we wanna limit carbohydrates? It depends on  how sensitive you are how carbohydrate sensitive  

most people today especially if you're overweight  have a carbohydrate intolerance they have poor  

metabolic health they've overdone carbohydrates  so their bodies don't handle them anymore  

and the solution to a lot of people's problem  is a low-carb diet and therefore you want to  

limit the amount so seven and a half is sort of  borderline you can still have some I would say  

you can certainly have like 100 grams which  would be like your average medium onion in a day  

but you don't want to go unlimited you want  to be aware of that. Another thing to keep in  

mind with both onion and garlic is if you have  SIBO which stands for small intestine bacterial  

overgrowth and a lot of people are getting more  and more of that it's when the bacteria grow in  

the wrong place you're supposed to have them in  the large intestine not the small intestine and  

if you have them in the small intestine and you  feed them the wrong things, and we'll talk about  

fodmap in a second, then you get lots of gas  lots of bloating and lots of digestive problems  

so fodmap stands for fructooligosaccharides,  disaccharides monosaccharides and polyols. So  

they're different forms of carbohydrates  like short to medium sized carbohydrates  

and polyols which are sugar alcohols and onion  and garlic has a lot of fructooligosaccharides  

and the body doesn't absorb those very much and  if you don't absorb them then they go down and  

they become food for the bacteria in the small  intestine so if you think that might be an issue  

read up a little bit on SIBO and you can look  for FODMAP and they list out the things that have  

high amounts of these carbohydrates that you  don't do so well with. If that is a problem  

then you can also soak the garlic and the onions  and that's going to help pull out some of these  

fructooligosaccharides. Now why did I pick these  specific vegetables that we're going to talk  

about today well because they're low in carbs  and sugar you get tons and tons of nutrients  

but you don't want to load up on sugar in order  to get those nutrients and the ones we're looking  

for specifically is potassium and magnesium  there's lots and lots of other micronutrients  

and the other big one is going to be sodium  which we get from adding salt to our food.  

We also want to consider serving size because I  love parsley for example but there's only so much  

parsley you can eat I make a salad called Tabouleh  and when I make that for two people I use a little  

over an ounce about 35 grams of parsley so it's  like 17 grams per person and it gives us some good  

nutrients I love the flavor that's why I eat it  but you can't eat as much parsley as you could eat  

cauliflower or broccoli for example so  just keep the serving size in mind as well  

most of the vegetables I'm talking about are  going to be liver cleansing for two reasons  

either they contain these organo-sulfur  compounds that help the body detox and make  

glutathione or they're part of the cruciferous  family and that means they contain a lot of  

phytonutrients and certain chemicals that  assist the liver in detoxifying and getting  

junk out of the body. Number eight is brussels  sprouts and they are in the cruciferous family  

so they'll help the liver they contain one  more specific compound that they're known for  

called Kaempferol that has been studied in detail  and known to be an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory  

and even have some positive impact on getting  rid of cancer. Number seven is tomatoes I love  

tomatoes you can cook with them you can eat them  raw you can eat them as a snack you can slice them  

on things they contain vitamins minerals and a  couple of antioxidants called lycopene and lutein  

that have been very studied in terms of helping  health and reversing disease and all that but  

I'll come back to this I don't want to focus too  much on all these specific chemicals it's great  

that they researches and figure it out but don't  complicate things too much. Get the broad picture  

know what good vegetables are and then just eat a  variety of those. But there's a few more reasons  

I picked these particular ones I looked at the  availability can you buy them in most places are  

they affordable can you get them around the year  and so forth also I included my taste preference  

what do I personally like and what do I know what  to do with them which ones do I know how to cook  

but also something called the dirty dozen and  the clean 15. So from time to time they measure  

the dirty dozen and the clean 15 which means they  measure how much chemicals, how much pesticides  

they find on the finished produce. Now here's one  of my pet peeve terms organic versus conventional  

because that makes it sound like there's been a  conventional way of doing this for the longest  

time this is how we do things and then it makes it  sound like organic is the exception. Well, that's  

not how it works. Organic is how the planet has  been for as long as it's been around we haven't  

added pesticides and poison whereas conventional  is what we've done for a few decades by spraying  

poison on the food so when I see this in a store  organic versus conventional I'm thinking they  

should call it conventional and poison that's  more true to what's actually going on but anyway,  

the clean 15 are the ones that they find the  least pesticides on and that would be avocado,  

onion, eggplant, and asparagus. So that's good to  know that if it's a money matter if you're holding  

back on vegetables because you feel like organic  is too much money, then these would be the perfect  

ones that you can buy that don't necessarily  have to be organic. Also cabbage cauliflower  

broccoli and mushrooms they barely found any or  very little pesticides compared to the dirty dozen  

and those included spinach, kale, tomatoes,  celery and potatoes so to the extent that you  

eat these you want to be really sure this is  where it's worth spending a little extra money  

on getting the organic. Number six is  cabbage and it's so useful in many ways  

and what I like is it's cheap cheap cheap. I don't  know any food that is really cheaper that for  

a few cents you can get yourself a meal basically.  It is also part of the cruciferous family so  

it does help the liver clean things  out it's full of vitamins and minerals  

and especially vitamin C it's very very high  so when people think that they have to eat  

fruit and oranges and drink orange juice  in the morning to get their vitamin C  

you're much better off having some cabbage. And  also there's so many ways of using cabbage you  

can eat it raw you can eat it cooked you can make  coleslaw and of course when you do the coleslaw  

you don't want to add a bunch of sugar. There's  some super easy recipes you just drizzle a tiny  

bit of olive oil a little bit of vinegar salt  pepper and some herbs like basil and you got  

yourself a fantastic salad. And of course when we  think about cabbage and other vegetables as well  

we want to think about the biome the microflora  the collection of 40 trillion life forms in your  

gut that help keep you healthy and part of what  feeds them is fiber so when you eat things that  

have carbohydrate you subtract the fiber because  you can't digest it. The fiber continues down  

to feed your bacteria and it's not an absolute  rule but pretty much the fiber feeds the bacteria  

that you want to keep in there and the sugar  feeds the bacteria that you don't want so  

when you eat a lot of sugar and not so much  fiber that's one of the main things that create  

dysbiosis or an imbalance in your flora and now  if you ferment these vegetables not only do they  

provide the fiber but they also come pre-loaded  with some bacteria some probiotics if you will  

and of course cabbage is one of the most popular  things to ferment and turn into sauerkraut but  

there's all kinds of different vegetables that  you can ferment and basically the more of the  

fermented you eat the better you're going to be  able to support that biome. Now one of the most  

common questions I get are about probiotics do I  need probiotics and a lot of people need them but  

I'm still not a huge fan of the way they're being  used I use a lot of probiotics in my office but  

here's how we need to think about them. Probiotics  are seeds when you buy that little capsule with 20  

billion units then those are seeds but the seeds  need a place to grow if you put flower seeds into  

the best soil it's going to make flowers. If you  throw those flower seeds on the concrete in the  

parking lot there's not going to be much growth  and that's how it is with probiotics that a lot  

of people's gastrointestinal tracts are so messed  up there's nothing that can grow there and that's  

the problem they have in the first place that's  the reason they have a problem in the first place  

is that there is imbalance and if you throw  seeds into that it's not going to do much so we  

need to look at the bigger picture and we need  to eat whole food we need to cut out the sugar  

increase fiber eat fermented food and now you're  well on your way to creating some healthy soil  

and now those probiotics can be used and now  they're going to actually work. Number five  

is bell pepper and again lots of vitamin C much  better than orange juice and a lot less sugar  

it has about three to four percent of net carbs  so you can eat plenty of bell pepper and what I  

like is that you can eat it raw or cooked it's one  of my favorite things eat it probably every day  

you can put it in salads you can stir fry it with  onion for fajitas and you could even eat it as a  

snack you could have a little piece of ham or a  chicken wing or a hard-boiled egg and and have  

a little bit of bell pepper along with it. Number  four is cauliflower and has tons of vitamins and  

minerals lots of potassium it is part of the  cruciferous group it's going to help the liver  

and it only has about three percent net carbs  and this is one of the reasons it's become  

so popular with the low-carb community that  it has tons of potassium but so low in carbs  

and you can turn it into sort of mashed  cauliflower as a substitute for potatoes  

riced cauliflower you can steam it you can  bake it in the oven and it's easy to eat  

a good bit you could easily eat three to four  hundred grams and there you probably get almost  

half of the potassium that you need in a day.  But I have to mention also one of my pet peeves  

it is when they say made with so cauliflower  has become so popular now with low carb and low  

carb is just flooding the world with all these  recipes and products that are supposedly keto  

so then now they start to throw cauliflower and  it says made with cauliflower and somebody figured  

out how to make a cauliflower pizza bottom so sure  enough all these manufacturers start making pizza  

crusts with cauliflower and it says made with  cauliflower but what they don't tell people is 90%  

of it is still something else and most of it is  some other form of starch. So if you look for  

these things and you read the fine print you see  these pizza crusts that says cauliflower pizza  

crust and it has just as much carbs as the regular  ones made with wheat flour. So read the fine print  

just because it says made with something good with  cauliflower without gluten that does not make it  

a health food automatically. Now a list of 10  vegetables is very short compared to all the good  

stuff that's out there so I want to include a few  honorable mentions here that would be mushrooms,  

green beans, celery, asparagus, parsley and  eggplant. And all of these I also eat on a regular  

basis these are some of my favorites then there's  some that for various reasons I don't really eat  

much but I know that they're excellent food  zucchini radishes spinach kale swiss chard and  

collard greens let me mention a few things on the  color coding the green the mushrooms and asparagus  

those were on the clean 15 list that means they  are least likely to have any pesticides on them  

whereas the ones in red celery spinach and kale  were on the dirty dozen. That means they're very  

likely to have pesticides so if you get these in  red celery spinach and kale make sure that you buy  

the organic variety. The ones in white were the  ones that there was no information on this latest  

list because they don't measure all the plants  every time and also when I get eggplant I make  

sure it's organic because almost all of the  eggplant out there is genetically modified  

and the same goes for zucchini. And now we're in  the medal rounds. Number three is broccoli it has  

tons of nutrients it is cruciferous it's in that  family it has only four percent net carbohydrate  

and I love it because it's so easy it's so tasty  you steam it you grill it one of my pet peeves  

though is if you go and you look up the benefits  of broccoli or the benefits of lots and lots  

of these different plant foods is that they're  presented wrong they're saying that you can use  

it to treat things now treat is a medical word  let's say you can treat cancer. In the medical  

world they treat things by giving medication and  what that does is it suppresses and interferes. It  

acts by stopping physiology it works by getting  in the way of what the body is trying to do.  

That's not what food does food does not  treat conditions food does not treat  

symptoms or disease. Food supports the body by  providing what it needs so when they say it treats  

cancer it treats osteoporosis it treats diabetes  it treats aging that is not what it does. The  

proper food provides something that the body needs  and when the body can return to balance then all  

of these things get better that's how it works. So  we're getting the wrong idea and when we pinpoint  

and we micro analyze and take things apart this  whole food business just becomes too confusing.  

It is all about health health is when everything  works when the body is allowed to return to  

balance. When it has what it needs when we give  it the things it has to have that moves us toward  

health when we provide too much of the things that  interfere or an imbalance of things that moves  

us away from health, all right? But we're not  treating anything with food that's the wrong way  

of seeing and it gets us confused and on the wrong  track. Number two is lettuce and there's tons of  

different kinds of lettuce we have all these  different ones I don't even know what they're  

called but the ones I use on a regular basis are  romaine and also some green leaf and some red leaf  

and also what they sell as a spring mix I love all  of them they have plenty of nutrients and fiber  

you can fill up you can make a huge bowl that is  very filling but it doesn't have a lot of carbs  

or a lot of calories it's a great filler I love  salads I have salads several times a week you can  

use it as a snack you can roll up little slices  of cheese and ham in it you can also use it for  

bundles burgers that's what I do a lot I just put  a layer of lettuce on the plate I put my burgers  

on and I load them the way that I would any other  hamburger with lots of good stuff but of course  

don't have the bread. And number one on the list  is avocado maybe the most perfect plant creation  

ever. It has two percent net carbs so even  though it lists nine percent carbohydrate  

seven percent out of that is fiber so most of it  you don't digest and it's a really healthy fiber  

that goes on to feed the good gut bacteria. It has  tons of potassium 500 milligrams per 100 grams so  

if you eat two or three of these you get most of  the potassium that you need in a day and avocado  

is even filling it may be the only non-starchy  water-rich plant food that is filling because  

it also comes with a lot of healthy fats and  there's so many ways to use it you could have it  

virtually every meal I slice avocado on top  of omelets I slice it and put it on top of a  

chili you can take out the seed or the pit you  just drizzle a little dressing in there and you  

can scoop it out and eat it the way it is. I make  guacamole several times a week as a side dish with  

whatever else we're eating so there's so many  ways it's so versatile. And as if that wasn't  

enough it is also the number one on the cleanest  of the clean 15. so if you feel like avocados are  

a little expensive and you restrict yourself then  know that that's one of the plants you probably  

don't need to get organic. If you enjoyed this  video, you're going to love that one. And if you  

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