Salads

According to the recommendations of the World Health Organisation, from a 25% to a 35% of our diet should consist of vegetables. In the summer it is hot and there is a lot of energy in the environment around us, energy that nurtures our body and therefore we have a smaller appetite than in colder seasons. A refreshing salad is therefore an ideal dish now.  

In traditionally vegetarian countries such as China, Vietnam or Japan, the raw salad as such does not exist. Are raw salads bad for you? No , they are not.  But for sure they are not the best way to to benefit from the vitamins in the vegetables either. It is much better to cook the vegetables for a short time since, although we lose a small percentage of vitamins, we save a lot of digestive energy. When people eat too much raw food, their digestive energy usually diminishes a lot: their belly bloats, they suffer from reflux, flatulence, heavy digestions and tiredness. 

On the other hand,  cooking  the vegetables for a very short time preserves from 80% to 90% of their vitamins. This is  a sufficiently high percentage and specially so if we bear in mind that the digestive weakness that an excessive consumption of raw food can bring about would prevent our bodies from absorbing  correctly the  vitamins in the vegetables. In conclusion, as a general rule, when we eat vegetables, we will cook them slightly in order to increase their digestibility and we will spare  raw salads for occasions such as  after doing a lot of physical exercise, when we eat fish or sea food and in the hot days of the summer.

For our summer salads,  we will use light cooking methods such as  blanching, pressing, macerating,  boiling for a  very short time or sprouting. 

Find here a delicious recipe of a pressed salad.