Not eating your veggies? It's no joke

[snopes]

In 2006, comedian Jay Leno proudly told Parade magazine that he hadn't eaten a vegetable since 1969. And it looks as if he is sticking to his no-green-food ways: In a recent skit, he accompanied Pee-wee Herman (aka Paul Reubens) to a salad bar — and declined everything except a cookie and a batch of deep-fried potatoes (technically a vegetable but not exactly a health food).

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...r-health_N.htm

[ElectricBarbarella]

Okay I am not quite that bad: I'll eat salads (love them actually) and I'll even eat salads that have spinach or carrots or other veggies in them (except broccoli). But I will not ever eat them cooked, nor will you make me.

Seriously, the list of what I will eat is easier to say than the list of what I won't is. However, I am not so picky that I deny veggies completely like Leno does.

Oh and I have two children who if given the chance, would eat nothing but veggies. So my "bad habit" did not carry over to them.

[bjohn13]

My list of things I absolutely won't eat is relatively short....onions (unless they are cooked to the point of being irrelevant in soups and chilis), mushrooms, and anything that lives in the water.

Of course, I refer to beef as beef. Therefore, the fact that I won't eat, say, a cow's eyeball doesn't really count because I'm more than willing to eat most of the rest of the cow.

[snopes]

Originally Posted by bjohn13

Of course, I refer to beef as beef. Therefore, the fact that I won't eat, say, a cow's eyeball doesn't really count

But obviously you won't eat McDonald's hamburgers, then.

[Assilem Brandywine]

Do mushrooms count as a vegetable? I know they're technically a fungus, but I guess from a culinary respect they can be vegetables the way tomatoes are vegetables. I've heard corn is actually more of a seed than a vegetable.

[Insensible Crier]

Originally Posted by Assilem Brandywine

Do mushrooms count as a vegetable? I know they're technically a fungus, but I guess from a culinary respect they can be vegetables the way tomatoes are vegetables. I've heard corn is actually more of a seed than a vegetable.

No, no, no, no they are not vegetables. Sorry, hanging munchkin alert. This started with a pizza commercial where a kid said he was getting his vegetables by eating mushrooms on a pizza. Mushrooms are not vegetables. They're not even a plant. If they're a vegetable then eating yogurt or cheese with live cultures counts as eating meat.

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by bjohn13

My list of things I absolutely won't eat is relatively short....onions (unless they are cooked to the point of being irrelevant in soups and chilis), mushrooms, and anything that lives in the water.

Short? That would eliminate about half the menu at my house!

[Pudding Crawl]

There's vegetables and vegetables. I will probably never eat broccoli or cauliflower ever again and I consider that a victory; however, I could eat a basketful of bok choi or asparagus. I will not have come within 100 yards of boiled cabbage but it's just right in rosti.
I had to eat a lot of dislikeable veg growing up, and I did come away with the lingering 'it's good for you...' guilt. I like cooking, though, so I investigated things I had not eaten before and swapped the nasty greenstuffs for good ones.
On a more extreme note, before we paired up my SO was convinced he could not stomach rice. There would have been no hope for the relationship had this been the case, but fortunately he was mistaken.
I don't see this as any different from other foodstuffs; I have a Thai recipe for chicken livers which is gorgeous, but liver & onions is foul. Common mushrooms cold and raw are grand, but I will eat around them when they turn into nasty slimy cooked things.

[Floater]

Originally Posted by Assilem Brandywine

Do mushrooms count as a vegetable? I know they're technically a fungus, but I guess from a culinary respect they can be vegetables the way tomatoes are vegetables. I've heard corn is actually more of a seed than a vegetable.

Corn is a vegetable when used as one. Don't ever confuse botanical with culinary terminology!

Originally Posted by Insensible Crier

No, no, no, no they are not vegetables. Sorry, hanging munchkin alert. This started with a pizza commercial where a kid said he was getting his vegetables by eating mushrooms on a pizza. Mushrooms are not vegetables. They're not even a plant. If they're a vegetable then eating yogurt or cheese with live cultures counts as eating meat.

Aren't fungi more related to animals in some respects?

[BamaRainbow]

Originally Posted by Insensible Crier

No, no, no, no they are not vegetables. Sorry, hanging munchkin alert. This started with a pizza commercial where a kid said he was getting his vegetables by eating mushrooms on a pizza. Mushrooms are not vegetables. They're not even a plant. If they're a vegetable then eating yogurt or cheese with live cultures counts as eating meat.

But, as Assilem noted, tomatoes are not REALLY vegetables either, but YOU try to convince the average consumer that they're fruits. You can preach the biology till you're blue in the face, and the average person is still going to come down with mushrooms on the "vegetable" side. I'm not arguing your point, but I'd rather consider mushrooms as vegetables than some items (ketchup and pickle relish) that the US gov't attemtped to classify as vegetables for the school lunch program.

[Floater]

Originally Posted by BamaRainbow

But, as Assilem noted, tomatoes are not REALLY vegetables either

Rubbish. Tomatoes are REALLY vegetables when used as such in a kitchen and they are also berries when looked upon from a botanical point of view.

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by BamaRainbow

But, as Assilem noted, tomatoes are not REALLY vegetables either, but YOU try to convince the average consumer that they're fruits.

I can let the fungi munchkin go if someone insists they aren't plants. But tomatoes are as much vegetable as an eggplant or a cucumber. The fruit/vegetable distinction is so vague as to be meaningless. Define fruit. Define vegetable. What about a banana? What about an avocado? "Fruit" and "vegetable" are not scientific terms! They don't lend themselves to the kind of precision that would allow someone to say, "It's not a vegetable!" Unless it's a mineral or an animal. Or, maybe, a fungi. (Can we just use the word "produce" or something? This is ridiculous.)

[mizzie]

Originally Posted by ElectricBarbarella

Okay I am not quite that bad: I'll eat salads (love them actually) and I'll even eat salads that have spinach or carrots or other veggies in them (except broccoli). But I will not ever eat them cooked, nor will you make me.

Seriously, the list of what I will eat is easier to say than the list of what I won't is. However, I am not so picky that I deny veggies completely like Leno does.

Oh and I have two children who if given the chance, would eat nothing but veggies. So my "bad habit" did not carry over to them.

We seem to have a lot in common here. I admit that I have an issue with most veggies. Like you, it's easier to list what I will eat: potatoes, corn, carrots (raw), broccoli (raw), cauliflower (raw), lettuce (all kinds), cucumbers... I can't think of anything else. And by raw, I mean raw only, period. My mom loves to sneak in broccoli then tell me "I though you liked broccoli, I saw you eat some before!"

I also can't stand the taste of berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, etc). I always get people who are like "you don't like strawberries?!?11??!?111???!?!!!??1" But I do like most other fruits.

But don't look down on the picky eater. If we are talking about someone who likes veggies, but would just rather eat crap all the time, that's one thing. But, for me anyway, I wish that I liked veggies. It would make life so much easier! And there are things that sound like they would be really, really good, if only I could stand to eat the ingredients. Like chili and fajitas. But the taste (or even just the smell sometimes) of most veggies literally makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Oh, and like ElectricBarbarella, this hasn't passed to my daughter. She just loves her veggies and listed them as her favorite food at school. If you give her a plate with chicken nuggets and green beans, she'll finish the beans and leave half the chicken. I don't think she's really mine.


ETA: I should note though, my mom taught me well. If I'm a guest in someone's home, I will eat what is put before me. If the meal is buffet style, I just won't take what I don't like, but if I'm served it, I'll force it down with a smile. I'm picky, I'm not rude.

[snapdragonfly]

Originally Posted by ganzfeld

I can let the fungi munchkin go if someone insists they aren't plants. But tomatoes are as much vegetable as an eggplant or a cucumber. The fruit/vegetable distinction is so vague as to be meaningless. Define fruit. Define vegetable. What about a banana? What about an avocado? "Fruit" and "vegetable" are not scientific terms! They don't lend themselves to the kind of precision that would allow someone to say, "It's not a vegetable!" Unless it's a mineral or an animal. Or, maybe, a fungi. (Can we just use the word "produce" or something? This is ridiculous.)

Fruit is absolutely a scientific term, in extremely specific and concrete terms.

The botanical definition of a fruit is an organ that contains seeds, protecting these as they develop and often aiding in their dispersal. This may be at odds with everyday usage of the word "fruit." Botanically, pineapples, oranges, and apples are fruits, but so too are "vegetables" like tomatoes and cucumbers. The pods that contain peas and beans are fruits, as are the dry, inedible structures that bear the seeds of many wild plants.

Read more: http://www.biologyreference.com/Fo-G...#ixzz0UThy79Ty


It's vegetable that isn't a scientific term. It's a culinary term and has no scientific meaning.

But fruit does.

And how things are classified in the botanical lab are different than how they are classified in the kitchen, thus for intents and purposes, mushrooms are vegetables. Though technically they are of course fungi.


Google this to your heart's content, it's consistent and clear.

For everyday usage, I think the term "produce" might be quite useful.

As for me, there's nothing you could classify as "produce" that I DON'T like, except for the more bitter of the greens and anything in the licorice flavored fennel family. Everything else is good. I LOVE veggies, or what ever the objects are that get called veggies.

[geminilee]

This quote from the article was a bit confusing to me (although nutrition science tends to be to me.)

That's about the time many people develop health problems linked to poor diets, she notes. But ideally, people would discover the joys of a crisp apple and a delicious veggie stir-fry long before their clogged arteries screamed for mercy.

That can't be the only (or main) reason we are supposed to eat that much veggies and fruits, is it? Just eating less fats would accomplish that goal.

I guess my question is how can the "minimum requirement" be the minimum if so few people are following it, and apparently surviving just fine on it? And how did they come up with a "minimum" anyway? A double blind, randomized study to find the actual minimums seems to me very unethical, and not something that would be allowed.

[snapdragonfly]

[quote=geminilee;1073167]

That can't be the only (or main) reason we are supposed to eat that much veggies and fruits, is it?

Surely not.

Just eating less fats would accomplish that goal.

But fruits and vegetables or "produce" is the only way to get vitally important phytonutrients as well as fiber. Well, you can take supplements, but it seems that we have not been able to reproduce the full healthful benefits in a pill - not surprising as they keep making new discoveries about what is in fruits and vegetables all the time, that was of course missing in their supplements before; and there's the possibility that the various nutrients work synergistically in produce in a way that pills don't reproduce. At any rate, someone eating protein powder, vitamin pills and fiber caps is not going to be getting the same benefits as someone eating an ideal diet of healthful nutritious food in the correct proportion.

I guess my question is how can the "minimum requirement" be the minimum if so few people are following it, and apparently surviving just fine on it?

Just because people don't drop dead doesn't mean they are in the least bit healthy. I see people all day long who look to be in terrible health and probably a lot of it is diet related. Also it takes a while to catch up with you. I used to get teased for eating healthfully when I was younger, and all my friends who looked just fine, slim, nice skin, decent hair, no health problems, scarfed down junk food and laughed at me. Ha ha ha. Now they all look 15 years older than me (who's laughing now - they want to know how it is I haven't changed at all) and have health problems and I don't, and I do attribute a good part of that to always having tried to avoid refined foods lacking in nutrients.

And how did they come up with a "minimum" anyway? A double blind, randomized study to find the actual minimums seems to me very unethical, and not something that would be allowed.

That's a good question, and one I suspect they come up with by figuring the average daily requirement of vitamins and fibers, (based on what they know to be a minimum to avoid health issues - we know for example how much vitamin c it takes to avoid scurvy, how much vitamin b to avoid beri beri, and in fact there is a lot of data on the threshold below which diseases develop. How they got that knowledge I'm not sure though - probably just observation over the years, as malnourished people to study have been plentiful throughout history) and then figuring the average amount of produce required to fulfill that. Obviously it's going to be an average here, but I have found over the years that trying to be uber scientific about exactly how many calories or fiber or fats I consume ends up being negligibly different that the much easier "average" casual figure out there. Because unless every bit is measured to the tiniest milligram and unless you test every morsel for actual nutritional content (because one apple, egg, chunk of beef, etc, varies from another slightly in real life, of course) there's just no way to be truly exact.

But it seems to average out to close enough.

[Nick Theodorakis]

Originally Posted by snapdragonfly

Fruit is absolutely a scientific term, in extremely specific and concrete terms.

...

Yes, but the fact that biologists have made it so doesn't preclude the fact it was a common term with varied meanings long before biologists got hold of it.

I doubt that anyone would be expecting, say, a tomato and cucumber salad, if you told them you were serving "fruit salad."

Nick

[geminilee]

Originally Posted by snapdragonfly

[ But fruits and vegetables or "produce" is the only way to get vitally important phytonutrients as well as fiber.

I can understand that, I am just questioning whether the "minimum" is actually a minimum, even on average. 86% do not get the "minimum" intake, and while you probably do see a lot of people who are ill because of their diet, it isn't over 3/4 of the population.

That's a good question, and one I suspect they come up with by figuring the average daily requirement of vitamins and fibers, and then figuring the average amount of produce required to fulfill that.

That was my question, really. I understand the simple math involved in computing the fruits and veggies needed to get it, but how do they come up with the daily requirement in the first place. They can't just starve one group of nutrients and see how it really affects them.

To me the numbers make it sound like the old "8 glasses of water a day" thing; like they tack on a very large amount for the sake of caution. That is, if they didn't pull the original requirements out of the air in the first place. I am having no luck finding out how they actually came up with the figures, and what methodology they used.

[Lainie]

When I hear people make claims like Leno's, I always wonder how they manage to poop.

Then again, I imagine most people's digestive systems are more robust and resilient than mine. Not that that's saying much.

[Nick Theodorakis]

Originally Posted by geminilee

...
That was my question, really. I understand the simple math involved in computing the fruits and veggies needed to get it, but how do they come up with the daily requirement in the first place. They can't just starve one group of nutrients and see how it really affects them.
...

The wiki has some history.

Nick