Does eating your greens really make you grow?

Yes

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by Megan Stoddard

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While greens alone do not make anyone grow, they do provide nutrients essential for growth in a child or adolescent, for the growth of a baby in a pregnant woman, and for maintaining health, life, strength, and mental growth in people of all ages. As with all foods that contribute to growth, the growth that results from eating greens is not obvious and certainly not immediate. But it is true that eating greens helps us grow.

"Greens" is a catchall term for many vegetables, typically used to describe edible leaves, often known as leafy greens: spinach, chard, kale, collard greens, and so forth. A surprising array of wild as well as domestic plants provide edible leaves that would fall into the category of greens. Many people are unaware that the leaves of radishes, turnips, and beets are edible. Not only are they edible, they are nutritional powerhouses, wonderful sources of calcium, iron, folic acid, vitamin K, vitamin E, vitamin C, potassium, magnesium, and much more. So are the leaves of dandelions, violets, nasturtiums (and the flowers of all of these, too), chickweed, stinging nettle (the sting is lost if the plant is boiled for 20 minutes or thoroughly dried), and many others. Even more so than domestic plants, wild leafy greens tend to be high in omega 3 fatty acids, which have received much attention for their health benefits in recent years.

More telling than any list of isolated nutrients, though, is consideration of what our prehistoric and early historic ancestors ate. Except in the coldest climates, where a diet mostly of meat would have been necessary, a hunter/gatherer tribe was always mainly a gatherer tribe. While much is made of big game hunting in the modern imagination, large hunts resulting in large kills would have happened no more than a few times a year. The bulk of the people's diets would have been small game, insects - and, mostly, plants. If we picture our ancestors walking around picking and eating handfuls of leaves all day, we may not be far from the truth.

It stands to reason that if anything was such an essential part of the human diet from so early, it's something we all need. And all of the nutrients we need contribute to growth in some way.

Calcium helps build bones. Iron helps build muscle. Folic acid is so essential to our health that a lack of it has been linked with nervous disorders, anxiety, and depression, and folic acid deficiency in pregnant women is a cause of birth defects. The word folic is derived from foliage, which tells us this is a nutrient specifically associated with leafy greens. Vitamin E is essential for cell growth, and vitamin K for blood clotting and the regrowth of broken skin. Magnesium and potassium are essential to keeping our hearts beating in consistent rhythm, our other vital organs functioning, and control of our smooth muscles. Deficiency in any of these would retard growth in almost every sense of the word.

Some of these nutrients are, of course, available from sources other than leafy greens. Calcium is best known as a nutrient provided by milk, and iron as a nutrient provided by meat. Yet studies have shown that the calcium provided by vegetables may be more absorbable than that provided by milk. A cross cultural study of osteoporosis in older women showed much lower rates of it among the Chinese, who typically eat no dairy and lots of high calcium vegetables, than among Americans and Swedes, whose diets tend to be high in dairy. As for iron, it is true that the iron in meat is more readily absorbed than the iron in vegetables. It is also true that established vegetarians are, on average, less likely than meat eaters to be anemic, even though their average iron counts tend to be a little lower. Vegetarians generally eat far more leafy greens than meat eaters do.

Anyone who does not eat leafy greens runs a great risk of being deficient in vitamin K, magnesium, and folic acid. Supplements may provide these nutrients, but not as well as food. To receive the full benefit of the nutrients, it is best by far to eat greens fresh. Canning strips them of most of their nutrients, as does boiling them. It is best to lightly steam greens instead, or to add them to stir fries, soups, or baked dishes. Cooked in that way, they retain much of their flavor as well as their nutrition, tasting much better than the overcooked glop that makes many children - and adults, too - think they hate vegetables.

The human growth that greens encourage is subtle, and it does not happen overnight. But without greens and the nutrients they provide, there could be no growth at all.

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