Ten Food Myths That Keep Your Family From Enjoying Inexpensive, Nutritious Vegetables

Here are ten myths that misrepresent vegetables, and that hurt your kids by discouraging you from preparing these versatile healthy foods.

1. Potatoes are fattening (or potatoes turn straight into sugar).

It's incontrovertibly true that potatoes are an excellent source of carbohydrate. Our bodies actually need at least a small amount of carbohydrate food every day to provide glucose, the preferred fuel for cells in the brain. It's easy to eat too many potato chips or French fries, but potatoes in small amounts are actually a healthy food in ways more people don't understand:

• Instant potatoes are a high-glycemic index food. In fact, in some tests, they have a higher glycemic index than glucose itself. That's probably because the gut reacts to the variety of stabilizers and anti-caking agents added to perfectly wholesome potatoes to turn them into something that can sit on the shelf for a year or so. In contract, boiled potatoes are a middle-glycemic index food. When potatoes are boiled, and served cold, especially when they are served with a little fat (as potato salad, for instance), they actually have a lower glycemic index than fruited yogurt and breakfast cereal.
• Boiling (not frying, baking, or roasting) potatoes creates resistant starch. This complex carbohydrate plays the same role as fiber in the colon, feeding probiotic bacteria, but only slowly breaking down into sugar.
• Potatoes are in the Nightshade Family, but the potentially toxic solanin only appears in the flesh of the potato just under the skin as it turns green. If it's green, throw it out. Otherwise, enjoy the whole potato.

2. Cabbage is just to fill you up.

Cabbage is a great source of glucosinolates, cancer-fighting sulfur compounds that give the vegetable its distinctive odor when cooked. To get the greatest benefit from the glucoinolates, however, enjoy cabbage raw in slaws and salads. Cabbage isn't something you should eat in excess; eating cabbage at every meal, especially raw cabbage at every meal, would also provide another kind of sulfur compound known as a goitrogen, which binds to the selenium and iodine needed by the thyroid. Cabbage is very low in calories, but it is a great source of vitamin C, vitamin K1 (the clotting regulator), vitamin B6, and manganese. Red cabbage provides anthocyanidins that can improve blood vessel strength, and, like carrots, support eyesight.

3. Carrots are too high in sugar to eat every day.

Fresh carrots stored in the crisper are crispy, crunchy, and sweet. The sweetness of the carrot depends on the soil in which it is grown. Sandy soils produce longer carrots that are less likely to fork, but peaty soils produce carrots that have a sweet, minty taste. As for the sugar content of carrots, five large carrots contain the equivalent of five grams (one teaspoon) of sugar. They are hardly a high-sugar treat.

That's a good thing, because carrots are a great source of beta-carotene in the (all-E)-beta-carotene isomer, which is better absorbed than the isomer of beta-carotene that appears in supplements. Carrots retain their beta-carotene best when they are kept at refrigerator temperatures wrapped in paper and protected from the air.

4. Corn is just a source of fructose.

High-fructose corn syrup (which also contains glucose) is made from corn, but corn itself is not high in fructose until goes through an industrial grinding process and is treated with a series of enzymes. Kernel corn and corn on the cob are relatively low in fructose but high in minerals and the eye-health antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin. Blue corn is rich in anthocyanins that are also found in fruit, and purple corn is a source of a particularly potent antioxidant known as procatechuic acid.

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5. Cucumbers are nothing but water.

Cucumbers are refreshing, but they are a lot more than just water. Like broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts, cucumbers contain cancer-fighting lignans such as lariciresinol, pinoresinol, and secoisolariciresinol, which reduce the risk of breast, uterine, ovarian, and prostate cancers. Cucumbers are a good source of vitamin C, beta-carotene, and manganese, and provide apigenin for fighting allergies and inflammation.

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6. Celery is just snacking, and maybe adding crunch and color

It isn't true that celery has no calories. A stalk of celery provides about 10 calories. With those 10 calories comes a huge range of important nutrients:

• Phenolic antioxidants, including caffeic acid, caffeolyquinic acid, cinnamic acid, coumaric acid, and ferulic acid.
• Flavone antioxidants including apigenin and luteolin.
• Flavonol antioxidants including kaempferol and quercetin.
• The dihydrostilbenoid antioxidant lunularin.
• Phytosterols including beta-sitosterol.
• Manganese, molybdenum, potassium, copper, calcium, B vitamins, and vitamin C.

In ancient Unani (Muslim) medicine, celery was used for fighting inflammation, especially inflammation caused by PMS.

7. Garlic is only useful for fighting colds (and maybe vampires).

Garlic is an age-old remedy for preventing colds. If you eat enough garlic, even people who have colds will smell your breath and leave you alone so you don't catch the virus. You don't have to get garlic breath, however, to benefit from the healthy properties of garlic. (You don't have to have garlic breath if you simply brush your teeth and rinse your mouth after eating garlic. The odor doesn't escape from your pores, although it can appear in intestinal gas.)

There are over 2,000 studies of the healing properties of garlic. Garlic is antiviral, but it also lowers blood pressure and high cholesterol, gently, without drastic side effects. Garlic has cancer-fighting properties, and it generally anti-inflammatory. What's the catch? The benefits of garlic come either from chewed garlic (you can't just wolf it down) or garlic extract supplements.

8. Onions are only useful for flavoring.

Onions are a great source of biotin, an often-overlooked B vitamin important for skin health and helpful in regulating blood sugar levels. They are also a source of the same quercetin for fighting allergies. Like another popular food that contains quercetin, apples, onions are helpful throughout allergy season. You could almost say an onion a day keeps the hay fever away.

Onions don't have to be eaten raw to enjoy their full allergy-fighting and antioxidant benefits. The quercetin stands up to cooking. The thing to remember about onions, however, is that their antioxidants are concentrated in their outer layers, which they serve to protect the plant against extremes of weather and insect attacks.

READ How To Sneak Veggies Into Your Diet

9. Parsley is just a garnish.

Parsley is pretty. It also freshens your breath, and adds a fresh flavor to cooked food. Parsley is something that is more potent if it is eaten raw or at least not cooked quickly in an open container. A lot of the important plant chemicals in parsley, especially alpha-thugene, eugenol, limonene, and myristicin, are found in its volatile oils, which can evaporate away if the vegetable is added to a boiling pot of stock or chopped and sprinkled over an uncovered dish of food put into the oven. These plant chemicals activate glutathione-S-transferase, which helps the body's most abundant antioxidant, glutathione, attach to the cells that need it.

10. Iceberg lettuce has no nutritional value.

Most of us think of "green" as the signal of nutritional value in vegetables. In Iceberg lettuce, however, it's the paler, "butt" end of the lettuce that contains the bitter compounds that help regulate digestion. These slightly bitter-tasting compounds, 11ß,13-dihydrolactucin-8-O-sulfate (jaquinelin-8-O-sulfate), cichorioside B and 8-deacetylmatricarin-8-O-sulfate activate the vagus nerve to signal the stomach to produce just a little more acid to more fully digest food. This breaks down compounds that could cause allergies and leaky gut. Besides, if Iceberg lettuce is all you can get your family to eat, it's a start toward a healthy diet.