Grapefruit Arugula Salad - Healthy Food Tip and Recipe

healthy food tip and recipe
August 17, 2013

Check Out What's New On Our Website

Grapes are not only a low glycemic (GI) food, they have blood sugar benefits which include better blood sugar balance, better insulin regulation, and increased insulin sensitivity. Find out more about Grapes.

Today's Recipe

If you don't know what to serve for dinner tonight ...

This easy-to-prepare salad recipe makes a wonderful accompaniment to almost any meal.

Grape and Arugula Salad

Prep and Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup seedless green grapes
• 4 cups arugula
• 3 oz gorgonzola cheese
• 2 TBS thinly sliced fresh fennel
• Dressing
• 1 TBS extra virgin olive oil
• 1 TBS fresh lemon juice
• salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Wash and dry grapes, arugula, and fennel in a salad spinner if you have one. Otherwise dry with paper towels so dressing is not diluted.
2. Arrange on plate with cheese and drizzle with dressing. Finish off with cracked black pepper.

Serves 4 Printer Friendly Version of Grape and Arugula Salad
In-Depth Nutritional Profile for Grape and Arugula Salad

Healthy Food Tip

Can you tell me which is better for you, spinach or Swiss chard?

Both spinach and Swiss chard are among the most nutrient-rich foods I know. Nutrient richness refers to the quality by which a food provides a concentration of nutrients for the calories that it contains. If a food is nutrient-rich, it means that you'll get a lot of nutrients but you won't have to "spend" a lot of calories on them.
In our World's Healthiest Foods ranking system, both spinach and chard offer an amazing total of 22 nutrients in excellent, very good, or good concentrations. Spinach contains a few more nutrients than chard in excellent or very good concentrations, but both are outstanding examples of highly nourishing foods.
But the real answer to your question involves your individual nutrient needs. If you're not getting enough folate in your diet, you may want to choose spinach over chard, since you'll be getting over 15 times the folate in spinach! However, if you're already getting plenty of folate but too little vitamin E, you may want to reverse your decision and select chard over spinach. Compared with spinach, chard will provide you with almost double the vitamin E.
Another thing to consider is biochemical individuality. For example, both spinach and chard are high-oxalate foods, and may both be foods to avoid if a person needs to follow a low-oxalate diet. For a person especially concerned about toxic exposure and not purchasing organically grown vegetables, chard might be a more attractive choice than spinach, since spinach has repeatedly appeared on lists of vegetables and fruits with higher amounts of pesticide residues. These types of concerns will vary from individual to individual, and always play an important role in finding the best match between your food and you.
I may have provided you with a more complex answer than you were looking for, but I wanted to go through this process as I think that it is an important way for people to think about their food and what would best serve them.

The bottom line is this…

If you don't have any biochemical individuality issues (these considerations are listed in the Individual Concerns section of the foods' website write-ups or individual chapters in The World's Healthiest Foods book) that would preclude you from either eating Swiss chard or spinach, I think that you can't go wrong with enjoying both foods. They are incredibly nutrient-rich foods that can do wonders in terms of providing important health-promoting nutrients.
For more information on this topic, please see:

• Spinach
• Swiss chard