Eat your vegetables first

That’s the advice of my nutritionist as I wondered why I lost weight despite my having eaten more rice and protein the past week. Believe it or not, the “vegetable first” experiment is proving to be effective. She also says, and I saw many posts about it, that eating vegetables first creates some kind of viscous gel that may wash the cholesterol or fat from the other proteins you consume…after the vegetables!

While traveling in Vietnam earlier this month, my friends and I were in awe at the variety of vegetables one can have with every meal we had. We are on the same tropical belt and can grow almost all the kinds of greens which Vietnam and Thailand can grow. What seems to be the problem? Why is our consumption of vegetables one of the lowest in Asia ?

In Vietnam, they have an abundance of vegetables, from the pricey leafy greens like lettuce and arugula, to the lowly sayote tops, kamote tops and morning glory or kangkong. While kangkong used to be harvested in swamps – making us call it swamp cabbage – there now are upland Chinese varieties that grow on soil. No matter what budget, there is a vegetable for you. The only challenge is how to cook it other than pinakbet or chopsuey. While the Chinese restaurants cook almost all kinds of veggies in either garlic stir fry or oyster sauce, we Pinoys usually have boiled ones, like a salad eaten with bagoong or guinamos. The Vietnamese, however, almost always have a side dish of fresh herbs, fresh strips of even banana heart and again, kangkong. Then you can see they use culinary herbs like mint, basil and coriander a lot, unlike our Filipino recipes. But we share our love for bitter gourd, or ampalaya, and other tropical ones like eggplant and string beans of all kinds.

Tomato, though considered a fruit, is also counted as vegetable by many as it is used fresh or in sautéed dishes along with onions and garlic.

How do we increase the Filipino per capita vegetable consumption (around 126 grams/day) which may result in better eyesight (carrots), better gut health (because of fiber) and better blood tests (because of low glycemic or low sugar numbers)? We need to teach children while they are in school to make vegetables a part of their diet. One cool way is to show them how vegetables grow in school gardens. Plant a tiny seed and watch the leaves grow in a matter of weeks. Include vegetables in their school lunch plans. Maybe the Department of Education can include gardening and vegetable growing as part of our curriculum.

Next is to encourage our chefs and restaurants to increase the choices of vegetable options. People have definite likes and dislikes for healthier vegetables like okra, saluyot and alugbati. My cousin, a doctor and a vegetarian, Dr. Jaime Galvez-Tan always suggests a native salad – kangkong, kamote (or its leaves), malunggay or moringa leaves, saluyot (jute leaves) and sili (pepper or sili leaves) and he calls it KKMSS salad. The idea is to combine nutrient-rich Filipino leafy vegetables into a “power salad” instead of using the more expensive leafy greens like lettuce. The dressing can be coconut oil-based, balanced with a citrus or calamansi and a sweetener like honey or muscovado sugar. Doc Jimmy, as I call him, also prescribes eating siling labuyo (green for medicine and red for vitamin). We met up last year at Flor Tarriela’s garden and we three started picking the peppers and consuming them whole, per his prescription. Three to five siling labuyo peppers a day is a preventive vitamin for good health. Take note that these are the tiny (one-inch maximum in length) bird’s eye variety and not the impostor Thai chilies that vendors label as siling labuyo just because it is red. That, I think, is called tingala or “look up” as the peppers grow in an upright fashion, but way bigger than our bird-sown siling labuyo.

The way to encourage vegetable consumption really starts in the home. My mother used to include vegetables in her soups and dishes as these also extended the servings for a big family like ours (eight children, parents and help). This is why and how we learned to eat okra, alugbati and many local vegetables we grew in our backyard.

Today, consumers do not even see the whole vegetable anymore, as supermarkets prepare chopsuey and pinakbet kits – diced portions of equal amounts of these different vegetables. I hear that in the Visayas, they have the laswa versions of these cut up ready-to-cook pinakbet packs. It would be interesting for chefs and cooks to honor vegetables by using them in their new menus.

Also, in preparation for the hard times, we found a wild vegetable tree in UP Los Baños called lagikway. It can be used in lieu of kangkong in soups and other dishes. There also are stalks like that of the taro plant which is called takway in Ilonggo. We saw the same being used in a sour soup in Vietnam.

Foraging for food also allows us to discover edible wild plants. In Vietnam rau rung or rau dai is the term used for anything that is foraged or collected in the forests and not grown in vegetable plots. In our country the foragers have found edible ferns like pako which is now used in salads at upscale restaurants. We also use seaweeds and these may count as flora or vegetables, too.

In China we find lohan vegetables in the menu and you can serve any seasonal veggies because families eat it for cleansing and good luck, generally during the Lunar New Year. I see it in most Chinese restaurant menus and it is really a mixed bag of vegetables in season.

Whether foraged or cultivated, vegetables must find their way into our Filipino diets. We must endeavor to increase our per capita consumption so we can be a healthier nation.

And good news for diabetics and the sugar- conscious – eating your vegetables first is the hack you may be waiting for.

Vegetables first, fruit last.