Your Mom Was Right

When she said, “Eat your vegetables, they’re good for you,” she had the nutritional fact right, but she could have put it in a more kid-enthusing way. And she could have cooked the veggies in chicken broth, or put a little butter with them. Lightly cooked with a little fat, veggies taste better and yield up more of their vitamins. One of the best nutrient advantages vegetables have is their folate, a true-blue B vitamin that boosts your energy supply, wards toxins’ attacks, nourishes your brain so you keep sharp, keeps your blood pressure normal, and sharpens your hearing. Can you hear a pin drop?

Remember Popeye and his spinach? Too bad he didn’t know that cauliflower has more folate than spinach, though spinach certainly has more chlorophyll. Maybe Popeye should have been munching a stalk of asparagus or a beet instead of pouring cans of spinach down his throat. Asparagus, beets and raw spinach are lots better folate suppliers than canned spinach. All vegetables and fruits yield more folate when eaten raw.
Nappa cabbage eaten raw has more folate than American green cabbage. It goes well in a mixed vegetable salad, or as a salad base, though romaine scores better on folate.

Here are some of the best sources of folate, per cupful, 400 mcg daily recommended by USDA for anybody of 14 years or older, lesser amounts for younger children

Micrograms (mcg) per cupful unless otherwise noted. Eat raw for best results.

Asparagus, 160 mcg
Beets, raw, 126 mcg
Cabbage, 39 mcg
Carrots, 15 mcg
Cauliflower, 66 mcg
Chard, 75 mcg
Chicory greens, 197 mcg
Nappa cabbage, 46 mcg
Romaine, 76 mcg
Spinach, 58 mcg
Tahini, 1/4 cup, 60 mcg
Turnip greens, 107 mcg
Mustard greens, 105 mcg.

Did somebody shudder and some other people raise their eyebrows on reading: Beets, raw? Traveling in Hungary in late fall, every salad we were given consisted simply of a pile of grated raw beets or carrots. They were served sans dressing, but I like a ranch style dressing mixed into them, and green leaf lettuce under them.

Fruits yield folate, too:
Fresh squeezed orange juice, 1 cup, 75 mcg
Whole orange, 39.7 mcg.
Pineapple juice 57.7 mcg
Raspberries, frozen okay, 1 cup, 32 mcg

 And chicken livers, if you can ever find some without spots indicating they came from a sick chicken, are a grand source of folate when from a bird allowed to graze on plants and eat bugs and worms. Healthy chicken livers each give you 236 mcg of folate, over half a day’s supply. Whole grains are another source of folate--key word: whole
One last word: Don’t confuse folic acid with folate. Folic acid is a synthetic vitamin.