Just by looking at a leafy green you can get a good idea about their nutritional value. The darker the color of a leafy green, the higher the antioxidants. Eating more salads is a start but to get the full benefits from this group of vegetables try spinach, arugula, and other greens rather than iceberg lettuce. You will get more vitamins A, B, C, E and K when you add leafy greens to your diet. Amongst other benefits, vitamin A helps with your vision, B increases metabolism, C with your immune system, E reduces free radicals, and K can help with osteoporosis.

The fibre found in dark, leafy greens will help with digestion in two ways. First, it cannot be broken down you get the feeling of being full for longer. Second, it helps your digestive system move food more quickly.

Despite the unfair reputation that vegetables, especially leafy greens, have gotten over the years they taste great and have many uses other than salads. You can add spinach, kale, romaine lettuce, bok choy, and other mild flavour greens to smoothies. The addition of these greens will not change the flavour of the smoothies but will add a ton of nutrition, making it an easy way to increase your vegetable consumption. Heartier green vegetables like kale, spinach, turnip, collard greens, or chard can be added to soups giving them a slightly different flavour and texture as well as adding all of these great health benefits.

And rather than having stuffed cabbage, try a darker green like stuffed grape leaves for a bit of a Mediterranean flavour. If you can find fresh grape leaves simply simmer them in water for 45 minutes or until they are soft and then cut off the stems and the hard middle part of the leaf. Take a little bit of lean ground beef and add in a small amount of salt, pepper, olive oil, cinnamon, allspice, mint, and brown rice and mix it up thoroughly. Take this mixture and stuff a tablespoon or so into the leaves and roll them tightly. Then put them in a pot, weigh them down with a heavy lit so they do not fall apart and simmer them lightly in salted water or chicken broth until the rice is cooked.

Look online for more recipes or ways to incorporate leafy greens into your diet and reap the benefits of this addition to your daily vegetable intake. There are even recipes out there which hide greens or other vegetables into meals to make them easier to feed to children or picky eaters. Make the healthy choice for yourself and your family and try to eat some form of leafy greens with one meal a day. Your body will thank you.