Plant Benefits

To go along with my last post about letting nature inspire your kitchen, I wanted to share some common benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables. We all know we should be eating more fruits and vegetables. But sometimes it’s hard to understand why eating yet another carrot stick is good for us! Understanding how they benefit our health is often the first step in including them more in our diets. Eating more fruits and vegetables is a great way to boost your immune system which is your first line of defense against so many diseases. Eating more plants helps prevent cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases. Plants help us keep a healthy weight, strengthen our hearts and even help mental health. Besides those benefits, plants offer lots of fiber and valuable minerals and vitamins that our bodies need.

Are you ready to try to include a few more fruits and vegetables in your diet now? Here are a few plants you could try that you might not have realized were edible! Before you try any of these though, please make sure that you ask a trained professional or a forager to help you identify what is edible and what is not!

• Dandelion
• Rose hips
• Chickweed
• Juniper
• Acorns
• Pine nuts and spruce tips
• Bamboo
• Prickly pear cactus fruit and pads
• Red Clover
• Yaupon Holly leaves
• Fiddleheads (baby ferns)
• Mullein
• Catnip