| Learn to Love Your Vegetables
By Ethan Quick
Mother Nature can be a bitch. She loaded vegetables with disease-fighting phytochemicals
and then packed them with fiber and water to help you fill up and keep lean, yet
somehow neglected to put their taste appeal on par with your favorite junk food.
This may have been what turned you into a guy who would rather watch Fried Green
Tomatoes than eat one.
But take heart: You may in fact be genetically wired to be a sensitive "supertaster"
of vegetables' bitter compounds (see "Are You a Supertaster?" below).
If genetics aren't the source of your problems, you may instead be one of the
poor sods who simply never learned to love his vegetables. Whatever the case,
we can't force you to stay at the dinner table until you've finished your vegetables--but
our 10 tips can help you find ways to sneak more greens into your diet.
1) Shred 'em
Cut up your vegetables and hide them in your food. "Some shredded vegetables
that work really well are zucchini, squash and carrots," says Kathleen Zelman,
M.P.H., R.D., a nutrition consultant and spokesperson for the American Dietetic
Association. "You can hide them in meat loaf, soups, stews and sauces--anything
that you'll cook for a period of time so they'll soften and become incorporated
into the dish."
2) Eat 'em With Meat
And you thought MSG was just that stuff in Chinese food that gives you headaches
and joint pain. Free amino acids such as glutamate (also known as MSG) help dull
the bitterness in certain vegetables. Glutamates are present in meat--especially
in aged meat such as pepperoni and aged beef. So mix chicken with your greens,
or stir-fry a vegetable and a low-fat sirloin.
3) Put 'em on Pizza
Fermented foods and some vegetables also contain free glutamates, so pile them
on a pizza for a glutamate bonanza that will help you down your vegetables without
any unpleasantness. "Pizza has a tremendous amount of free glutamate,"
says Paul Breslin, Ph.D., an associate professor at the Monell Chemical Senses
Center in Philadelphia. "Bread is fermented, cheese is fermented, and tomatoes
and pepperoni contain a lot of free glutamate." When you do get a pizza--which
shouldn't be all that often--have the pizza guy pop your vegetables onto a thin
crust with half the cheese (and skip the aged meats). You'll cut down on the empty
carbs and saturated fat and load up on the disease-fighting phytochemicals.
4) Heat 'em Up
Heating up vegetables, either steaming, microwaving or stir-frying, helps dull
their bite. In fact, heated vegetables, especially the roasted kind, taste sweet.
"Roasting an onion, garlic or any vegetable makes it taste much better,"
says Zelman. "The high heat caramelizes it, so it takes on a whole different
flavor and texture."
5) Shake on a Little Salt
Sprinkle your greens with some sodium, which will also cut the bitterness. "We're
still not sure how the mechanism works," says Breslin. "It has something
to do with salt interfering with bitter-taste signals getting to the brain."
Again, do this in moderation.
If you're hypertensive, don't do it at all.
6) Add Some Healthy Fat
According to Breslin, some bitter compounds are lipophilic, meaning they dissolve
readily in fat. So try adding a little fat (and we stress a little) to your vegetables
by sauteing them in oil. Olive oil is very low in saturated fats and loaded with
healthy monounsaturated fats, so choose it over others. However, for a little
variety you can use sesame oil or peanut oil, which are also low in saturated
fat--just go easy with these.
How to saute: Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add two teaspoons
of olive oil. (Heating the oil should take about a minute.) Cut your vegetables
into uniform sizes so they cook in the same time, and saute them for about five
minutes until they're crisp-tender. Be sure to stir the vegetables, lifting them
up frequently and moving them around the pan.
7) Get Saucy
If you eat tomato sauce on pizza, meatball subs or spaghetti, ostensibly you're
eating vegetables. Since pizza and meatballs don't fall into what we consider
health foods, try smothering your skinless chicken or ground turkey breast with
tomato sauce. You can even double your vegetable intake by mixing some shredded
zucchini or carrots into the sauce (the sugar in the marinara will squelch any
bitter taste). And don't labor over your own sauce; simple old Prego or Ragu works
just as well.
8) Dip Your Chips
Salsas offer a spicy way to get your vegetables, says Zelman. Try mixing freshly
diced tomatoes with scallions, garlic, cilantro, peppers, black beans, corn and
onions. The free glutamate in the tomatoes will help take the edge off the other
vegetables. Scoop up the salsa with some low-fat baked chips or celery, or use
it to pour over chicken breast or fish.
9) Be Adventurous
Some vegetables you may have never tried may be surprisingly pleasing to your
palate. For instance, if you don't enjoy the tang of green peppers, try purple
or red ones, which are far sweeter. Supermarket produce departments offer an increasing
variety of exotic vegetables such as baby leeks, daikon or broccoflower; give
them a try.
10) Boot Your Inner Child
As you grow older, your sense of taste grows less discerning, so the vegetables
you hated in 1983 may not be as offensive in 2003. If you allow your childhood
biases to keep you from getting your greens, you are seriously shortchanging your
health. Give vegetables another chance and you may be glad you did.
ARE YOU A SUPERTASTER?
Science separates people into two groups, "tasters" and "nontasters,"
based on their ability to sense a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide. In the
late 1970s, Linda Bartoshuk, Ph.D., a taste researcher at Yale University, began
to test people for sensitivity to a similar chemical called 6-n-propylthiouracil,
or PROP. Her work revealed a subset of tasters, dubbed "supertasters,"
who were particularly sensitive to PROP's bitter flavor. In comparisons to nontasters,
supertasters tasted more sweetness in table sugar, more bitterness in foods and
beverages such as black coffee, and more sourness in fruits.
As luck would have it, the compounds that give vegetables their health benefits
lean toward the bitter end of the scale, which makes supertasters more likely
to reject them, explains Valerie Duffy, Ph.D., R.D., an associate professor in
the dietetics program at the University of Connecticut.
The good news is that sensitivity to PROP is associated with a decreased risk
of cardiovascular disease, as supertasters tend to dislike fatty and sugary foods.
"Supertasters have lower cardiovascular risks, but at the same time they
may have elevated cancer risk because they're not eating all those bitter vegetables,"
says Bartoshuk.
Here's how to determine if you can fairly call yourself a supertaster.
What you need:
- A gummed reinforcer ring (the kind used on loose-leaf paper) - Blue food coloring
- One cotton swab - A magnifying glass
How to do it:
- Put the reinforcer ring on either side of the midline of your tongue, with one
side of the ring touching the edge of the tongue. - Use the cotton swab to dab
blue food coloring in the center of the ring. - Remove the ring and, using the
magnifying glass, count the pink circles on the blue background of the gum reinforcer
ring. These circles are called "fungiform papillae," and they correspond
to the number of taste buds.
What it means: If there are more than 30 circles in the ring, you're a supertaster,
which places you within 25% of the population. Having from five to 10 rings means
you're a nontaster, and anywhere in between identifies you as a normal taster.
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