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As green vegetables have lots of health benefit, you should include leafy vegetables in your diet. Green vegetables are the source of minerals, vitamins and other nutrients that can prevent cancer and heart related ailments.

By including green leafy vegetables in your diet, your body will get essential vitamins like C, K, E and B. Other nutrients that nurture your body are iron, calcium, and fiber. While vitamin K can prevent osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, and atherosclerosis, vitamin E helps to prevent skin cancer. Leafy vegetables are a rich source of potassium and magnesium. While potassium has the ability to regulate blood pressure, magnesium regulates blood sugar. A recent study showed that eating a cup of green vegetables reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes by 14 percent.

Some of the commonly used green leafy vegetables are basil, lettuce, broccoli, parsley, celery, spinach and flowering brassica.

Basil is a staple herb of Thai and Vietnamese. Some of the varieties commonly found are holy basil, lemon basil and Thai sweet basil. While, lemon basil is a common ingredient of Asian sweets, sweet basil is used in the Thai food. Thai basil chicken and Thai basil beef are the two most popular dishes made with basil leaves.

Lettuce leaves are the common ingredients of Japanese and Chinese cuisine. Some the commonly known lettuce varieties are butter head lettuce, Chinese lettuce, leaf lettuce, semi heading lettuce and stem lettuce. Head lettuces are crisp and have a delicate flavor. So they are used in salads. Stem lettuce looks similar to a combination of celery and lettuce and are used in soups, stir-fries and salads. In general, lettuce leaves provide dietary fiber, carbohydrates, proteins and a trace of fat. Lettuce leaves are harvested at an early stage when tender and crispy.

The leafy vegetable that recently gained worldwide attention is broccoli. Numerous researches on broccolis ability to fight cancer are going all around the world. Recent researches shows that the active photochemical known as sulforaphane present in broccoli and cauliflower can search and destroy the cancer creating cells. Meanwhile, another study indicated that the broccoli sprouts have fifty times more cancer fighting capacity than the normal broccoli. That means, consuming even a small amount of cruciferous leaves can reduce the risk of developing many types of deadly cancer lines. Different varieties of Broccoli are green lance, kailaan open pollinate, ryokuho, suiho and wan shen. This leafy vegetable is used in salads and for stir-fry.

Parsely is another flavorful and nutrient rich herb. This leaf is used in doodle dishes, chicken dishes, and pork dishes and to season soups. In most dishes, the last item added to enhance its flavor is parsley. Two types of parsley available in market is Chinese parsley and Japanese parsley. The garnishing property of parsley gives it much popularity.
Parsely contains two types of components. The first type is volatile oil components like myristicin, limonene, eugenol, andalpha-thujene.The second type of components are flavonoids. This includes apiin,apigenin, crisoeriol, and luteolin. Parsely plays a key role in maintaining cardiovascular health.

Another leafy vegetable that is commonly used for making dishes is celery. Chinese celery’s flavor is bit stronger than those available in western markets. This is one of the most commonly grown leafy vegetable in China. People use the entire plant either in the fresh form or dried. The leaf is used in soups and in stir-fry. Some of the commonly available celery varieties are kintsai dark green, light green and white queen.

We can prepare lots of dishes with the green leafy vegetables. I search on various websites connected to Cox Internet to get different types of recipes. We should not overcook green vegetables as it will destroy the nutrients.