Leafy greens, including kale, spinach, turnip greens and others, are power houses of nutrition. They contain ample vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, those plant compounds known to fight diseases, including cancer.
A steady diet of leafy greens offers protection against gastric cancer and ovarian cancer. Leafy greens can also reduce your risk of heart disease.
Leafy greens are high in carotenoids that our bodies convert to vitamin A, which researchers believe is necessary for maintaining healthy body tissues and fighting off invaders and toxins.
Eating leafy greens regularly may even help trim your waistline. They’re virtually fat-free and very low in calories, while offering a big helping of nutrition.
Green Leafy Vegetable Names for Kids
Following are some common leafy vegetables for healthy diet:
- Garden cress: cress cultivated for salads and garnishes
- Spinach: dark green leaves; eaten cooked or raw in salads
- Rapini: Common vegetables described as winter greens
- Cabbage: genus Brassica oleracea grown for their edible leaves or flowers
- Radicchio: prized variety of chicory having globose heads of red leaves
- Purslane: fleshy succulent obovate leaves often grown as a potherb or salad herb
- Celery: widely cultivated herb with aromatic leaf stalks that are eaten raw or cooked
- Asparagus: plant whose succulent young shoots are cooked and eaten as a vegetable
- Sorrel: large sour-tasting arrowhead-shaped leaves used in salads
- Fiddlehead greens: fiddleheadsof certain ferns are eaten as a cooked leaf vegetable.
- Water spinach: Water spinach is a long, leafy green vegetable with hollow stemsthat grows in water or damp soil
- Watercress: cresses that grow in clear ponds and streams
- Fennel greens: A good source of fiber as well as heart-friendly nutrients like potassium
- Swiss chard: long succulent whitish stalks with large green leaves
- Punarnava: Punarnava helps to correct digestive fire and reduce Amadue to its Deepan (appetizer) and Pachan (digestive) properties
- Parsley: aromatic herb with flat or curly leaves
- Coriander: parsley-like herb used as seasoning or garnish
- Stinging nettle: treat painful muscles and joints, eczema, arthritis, gout, and anemia
- Broccoli: branched green undeveloped flower heads
- Beet greens: young leaves of the beetroot
- Romaine: lettuce with long dark-green leaves
- Drumstick greens: It is a staple vegetablein Southern India
- Grass pea leaves: seeds used for food in India and for stock elsewhere
- Dill leaves: aromatic threadlike foliage of the dill plant used as seasoning
- Endive: widely cultivated herb with leaves valued as salad green
- Collard greens: smooth-leaved kale
- Turnip greens: tender leaves of young white turnips
- Iceberg: lettuce with crisp tightly packed light-green leaves in a firm head
- Kale: coarse curly-leafed cabbage
- Roselle leaves: sparsely prickly annual herb or perennial subshrub widely cultivated for its fleshy calyxes
- Fenugreek: aromatic seeds used as seasoning especially in curry
- Chives: cylindrical leaves used fresh as a mild onion-flavored seasoning
- Leek: related to onions; white cylindrical bulb and flat dark-green leaves
- Mache: corn salad harvest
- Mustard greens: leaves eaten as cooked greens
- Mint: he leaves of a mint plant used fresh or candied
- Sweet basil: leaves or the common basil; used fresh or dried
- Perilla: small genus of Asiatic herbs
- Arugula: grown as a salad crop to be harvested
- Amaranth: having dense plumes of green or red flowers; often cultivated for food
- Bok Choy: elongated head of dark green leaves on thick white stalks
- Saluyot leaves: Saluyot leaves are very nutritious, it is rich in calcium, iron, protein, vitamin A, C and E
- Artichoke: a thistle-like flower head with edible fleshy leaves and heart
- Turnip Greens: tender leaves of young white turnips
- Zucchini: small cucumber-shaped vegetable marrow; typically dark green
- Bitter Gourd: fresh green vegetable
- Chinese cabbage: elongated head of crisp celery-like stalks and light green leaves
- Spring onion: an onion taken from the ground before the bulb has formed
- Curry leaves: for cooking purpose
- Indian Squash: is a squash-like cucurbit grown for its immature fruit