Spinach and Beets; A Health Care Treat

In a canny move, the Daily Beast is featuring an article on being healthier by eating certain food combinations. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-18/10-power-food-combos/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsR5. This caught my eye for two reasons. First, now that the slippery slope toward government run health care has been breached with the passage of the Health Care legislation last night, we should do everything in our power to make ourselves healthier in order to avoid the scary government- run health care system all together. This article is a great first step.

If you think I am nuts I suggest you look at just two things: the financial condition of Medicare/Medicaid and the pilot for the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution show that premiered on ABC last night. In it Oliver, British chef out to change the world, is thwarted in his efforts to bring actual food to a school cafeteria by a USDA requirement that 2 breads be served at lunch. Predictably, Jamie's offering of real food was shunned by the little kiddies who have been brainwashed into thinking the primordial chemical soup that is coaxed into tasty shapes resembling something mistakenly called chicken nuggets or a pile of mashed potatoes. Just watching the women "cook" the schlock in the school kitchen almost gagged me. No need for smell-sense-around--I could almost detect the disgusting odor merely from the visuals on the screen. Seriously, it nearly made me ill.

If this is the government telling us what to eat, can you even imagine what they are going to tell us to do with the ailments we acquire from following that advice? The skin crawls.

The second reason it caught my eye was the spinach and beets recommended in the article's first entry: one should eat spinach in combination with beets. This very subject came up Saturday night as we had an impromptu neighborhood bar-b-que in the front yard across the street. I made a Farmer's Market salad composed of spinach, chopped apple, carrot, navel orange and shallot in blood orange vinaigrette.

After his second huge plate of salad, Bob, the neighborhood biker (as in cyclist) said that a nutritionist once told him that if you eat spinach you should also have beets to counteract something or other. Doug piped in that maybe it had something to do with all the iron in spinach. I (the foodie) sat silent, except to offer that I did have some fresh beets in my fridge.

The next thing you know, here comes this article which explains that the intestinal processing of the iron in the greens is enhanced by the simultaneous consumption of high Vitamin C carrying foods, such as beets! Well, who knew? Those guys were really on to something.

Similarly, apparently, olive oil enhances absorption of the lycopene in tomatoes, protein such as beef helps absorb the Vitamin A in carrots, lemon promotes absorption of the antioxidants in green tea, fish oils and garlic together equal anti-inflammatory properties, the antioxidants in rosemary neutralize the free radicals in beef, oatmeal and OJ mediate cholesterol, red wine and apples fight blood clots, trail mix is easier to digest than nuts and dried fruits separately and blueberries plus grapes equals exponential levels of antioxidants. There are five bad combinations as well, ranging from eggs and coffee to milk and anything: I highly recommend you print it out the original article for easy reference.