I lifted my five-week deadline for the GREEN DIET, since it didn’t produce any weight loss in that amount of time.
Green, green and more green, or green with everything, is believably more healthy, but there are some down sides when considering leafy greens.
1 – they spoil quickly when fresh
2 – you lose a lot of product from outer, soiled, bruised leaves
3 – they cook up into tiny portions
4 – they’re expensive
Unless you use them in a salad, adding three or four dollars to a supper dish just to see some green in it isn’t realistic. Not everyone has an unlimited spending account at the grocery store.
5 – prep time and storage isn’t cost-effective; that’s why restaurants buy their greens bagged.
Swiss chard, green chard, mustard greens all cook up to barely nothing. Spinach too. Collards are about the only green leaf (besides cabbage) that gives you some return on your effort. They lose stiffness mainly – unless of course you overcook them, then they bunch up to look like a huge marijuana bud.
American blacks love collard greens, yet where is the proof of better health and weight control there? To hear them talk they invented them, at least they own them, along with green beans. Again, although I would be fatter without the green food, green in itself isn’t in my view a fat-reducer. I believe it’s an enhancer to better assimilation, if you don’t gorge yourself with other stuff.
CHLOROPHYLL makes a plant green
A very small number of plants do not contain chlorophyll, but get their nutrients from other plants that do contain chlorophyll – they’re called parasitic plants. Fungi of all kinds do not contain chlorophyll. To the best of my limited research for purposes here, almost all the plants we as humans consume, except for fungi, contain chlorophyll. The plants that don’t, we wouldn’t be eating anyway. So it is safe to conclude that chlorophyll is a necessary element to healthy eating. Is there anybody you ever heard of who lived on fungi alone? No.
Chlorophyll presents itself as green in all plants that produce the fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes that we by nature are designed to consume in addition to the leafy greens.
In the process of GOING GREEN as the second stage of my rapid fat-loss diet, I discovered that green = all plants (except mushrooms). Even when the fruit, nut, seed, vegetable, legume or leaf isn’t the color of green, they all originated from green.
“Chlorophyll, which resides in the chloroplasts of plants, is the green pigment that is necessary in order for plants to convert carbon dioxide and water, using sunlight, into oxygen and glucose. During photosynthesis, chlorophyll captures the sun’s rays and creates sugary carbohydrates or energy, which allows the plant to grow.”
Except for some one-celled organisms, that have both plant and animal characteristics, animals do not contain chlorophyll and cannot convert carbon dioxide and water, using sunlight, into oxygen and glucose.
Without plants animals could not survive on this planet, as there would be no oxygen. Oxygen is considered food in that it helps plants to grow, which provide planet earth with oxygen so animals and plants can thrive. But without the plants, animals would die for lack of oxygen. If the plants are here, the animals can survive here. Plants provide the food (oxygen) for the plants to grow, for most animal life to be able to breathe, and for animals to consume for nutrients.
Just because an animal eats plants, doesn’t make the animal capable of doing what a plant does. We don’t have the mechanism written into our DNA that provides for that. We do not contain the chloroplasts necessary for the conversion. We’re not food. Plants are. We consume oxygen, we don’t create it.
Some people take chlorophyll supplementation. I tried it years ago and didn’t notice any difference in how I felt. The promise of increased energy didn’t happen. Maybe I didn’t go long enough. Maybe we all would benefit from more chlorophyll in our diets. Maybe I’ll give it another try in future. Not today though.
I’ll keep with the inexpensive greens, finding new ways to insert more green into my diet.
Although I’m not increasing the green for the purpose of fat-loss, I won’t rule fat-loss out yet.
I’m still GOING GREEN.
