Mom Was Right: Vegetables Are Good for You

What do broccoli, Brussels sprouts, turnips and beets have in common? They all send shivers up the spines of most 7- and 8-year-olds. But persevere, moms and dads, because science is behind you -- we should be eating our vegetables.

If we don't get vitamins in our diet, we will develop serious health problems, says Gary W. Elmer, Ph.D., professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Washington School of Pharmacy. "There's a strong correlation between increased intake of vegetables and a lower rate of chronic diseases," he said.

Vitamins help the enzymes in our body carry out important metabolic steps.

Some vitamins also have been directly linked to the prevention of specific diseases. These include:  

• Folic acid, a vitamin found in green, leafy vegetables; anemia and neural tube birth defects

• Vitamin D; rickets

• Vitamin A; blindness

• B vitamins; pellagra, beri beri and Wernicke-Korsikov syndrome

• Vitamin C; scurvy

• Vitamin B12; pernicious anemia

Most people know whether they are on a well-balanced diet, Dr. Elmer says. If not, though, an easy way to find out is to track your food intake for a week and then use a food table that allows you to compare your intake of vitamins with the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Information Center Web site has a variety of DRI tables.

DRIs include Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs), which describe the intake that meets the estimated nutrient need of nearly all (up to 98 percent) healthy individuals in a specific age and gender group. The RDAs will help guide you to achieve adequate nutrient intake.

DRIs also include another category: Adequate Intake (AI), which is used when sufficient scientific evidence is not available to calculate an estimated average requirement. The AI value is used as a goal for individual dietary intake when an RDA cannot be determined. 

If you are meeting the DRIs, you can rest assured that you're on the winning side against disease, because the RDA  and AI are not a minimum but is set at a higher level than what is essential, Dr. Elmer says.

If you are below the RDA or AI, however, you should try to improve your diet and take a multi-vitamin and mineral supplement. Generic brands will do. When selecting a supplement, Elmer recommends dividing the price by the number of pills in the bottle. If the answer is more than eight cents each, the price is too high, he says.

In fact, some of the more expensive supplements, like those marketed toward seniors or as stress relievers, may lack one or more of the essential vitamins.

A good supplement should contain at least the following: B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, C, folic acid, A, D, and E. Studies have shown that folic acid prevents neural tube birth defects from occurring during the early stages of pregnancy and may play a role in preventing heart disease and certain cancers, Dr. Elmer says.

So, with all this good news about vitamins, why has it taken so long for such simple advice as "eat your vegetables" to sink into the collective American psyche?

We've simply acquired too fine a taste for salty, fatty food, according to Dr. Elmer. "A heaping plate of vegetables with wedges of orange and mango on the side is not the American idea of a gourmet meal," he says.