vegetables

These Easy-to-grow Weird Vegetables Are Quite Delicious

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Angela Gates – It’s easy to fall into a predictable habit when you garden. You plant a few of your favorite vegetables and some flowers, and consider your crop selection over.

In doing so, you may have overlooked a few of some of the most unique (and even weird) plants that you could (and should) grow. It’s time to take your garden to the next level. Instead of simply planning the same standard garden this year that you’ve always done, spruce it up with a few of these unique plants.

1. Black tomatoes

gardeningLove tomatoes? Add some visual appeal to your tomato crop by planting the Indigo Rose tomato – also known as black tomatoes. These antioxidant-rich tomatoes are healthier than their traditional red counterparts, but are just as easy to grow. With their striking black color, these tomatoes have a dark skin, but the interior is fleshy and savory.

2. Kohlrabi

Earning a place in the “oddest looking” category, kohlrabi comes in bright purple, white or green. Part of the cabbage family, this colorful plant might be the closest you get to an alien encounter – and you won’t even have to leave your garden. Perfect for gardens in cooler weather, the kohlrabi is a cross between the cucumber and the radish. Continue reading →

The Top 24 Anti-Inflammatory Foods

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Mae Chan – Researchers at the University of South Carolina, including James Hebert, ScD, and Philip Cavicchia, PhD, scored foods and food components thought to positively or negatively affect levels of inflammation, based on a review of peer-reviewed studies relating to diet and inflammation inflammation that were published between 1950 and 2007. Since then, new research is bringing the index closer to “prime time”– ready to be used in epidemiological and clinical studies.

While each plant has its own twist, all are based on the general concept that constant or out-of-control inflammation in the body leads to ill health, and that eating to avoid constant inflammation promotes better health and can ward off disease, says Russell Greenfield, MD, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“It’s very clear that inflammation plays a role much more than we thought with respect to certain maladies,” Greenfield stated.

“We always thought anything with an “itis” at the end involved inflammation,” he says, such as arthritis or appendicitis. But even the illnesses without an “itis” at the end, such as cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, even Alzheimer’s disease, may be triggered in part by inflammation, he says.

It is becoming increasingly clear that chronic inflammation may be at the root cause of many serious illnesses.

Carbohydrates, fat and cholesterol are among the food components most likely to encourage inflammation, while magnesium, beta-carotene, vitamins A, B-6, C, D and E, fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, flavonoids, turmeric and tea were the strongest anti-inflammatories.

24 Highest Anti-Inflammatory Nutrients

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