So, what are green foods? They’re that stuff we baby boomers have been hearing about since we were little kids: deep green leafy vegetables. Not vitamins or medicines, just deep green leafy vegetables. Grandma knew what she was talking about when she told us to eat our spinach so we could grow up to be strong like Popeye. The power of the nutrients in deep green leafy vegetables to heal and rejuvenate a body is unmatched by any combination of synthetic medicines or supplements.

Green foods contain chlorophyll, the same green pigment found in plants. In case you’ve forgotten your high-school biology, chlorophyll is what makes life on earth possible. The oxygen we breathe comes from the chlorophyll in plants. To bring it down to its most simple terms: no chlorophyll, no human life.

Chlorophyll is identical to human blood with one exception: the center element in chlorophyll is magnesium, whereas the center element in blood is iron. Some researchers claim that chlorophyll has the ability to release magnesium from its center and absorb iron, and thus become hemoglobin. Chlorophyll literally becomes human blood. More blood means our body has more ability to disburse oxygen!

Chlorophyll not only increases oxygen levels throughout the body, including the extremities, it also releases carbon dioxide, which helps prevent disease incubation. Green foods take carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, the toxic byproducts of our breathing in heat and pollution, and convert them into oxygen. So it’s a simple equation: green foods = oxygen = the most powerful tool we have for disease prevention and recovery.

Even the side effects are positive.

Not only do green foods have heavy concentrations of chlorophyll that oxygenate the body, they also have enzymes that rejuvenate and are responsible for virtually every chemical reaction at the cellular level.

When we increase our food’s digestibility, we increase the speed with which it is eliminated from our bodies, which, in turn, helps eliminate illness. Here’s why: as undigested food goes through the intestinal system, it turns to waste, attaches itself to the intestinal wall (sometimes hiding in little pockets) and becomes toxic. Toxic waste is essentially slow-acting poison to the human body. When we start eating green foods, with their rich digestive as well as antioxidant enzymes, those toxins that have built up over the years (or decades) begin to slough off from their hiding places and evacuate. Once they’re voided, the foods we subsequently eat will be fully digested and fully eliminated. In other words, our guts will feel better, our digestive tract will work better, and our calories will turn more to energy than fat.

Besides digestive enzymes, green foods also contain potassium and cell salts, which encourage the normal elimination process. We all know we need fiber to help avoid or correct constipation, but the recent trend of relying solely on fiber is actually counterproductive. Fiber is bulky; too much bulk can literally stretch the intestines out of shape and, thus, out of proper functioning. Potassium, on the other hand, causes the bowel to contract, while sodium causes it to expand. Aha! A pattern of logic: eating green food abundant in potassium and cell salts will cause your intestines to contract and expand, which will gently squeeze the bowel material downwards and . . . viola! Daily, easy elimination. Does it get any better than that?

Well, actually, yes, it does.

Let’s face it: over-acidity is a rampant problem in America. In fact, based on the abundance of TV commercials for antacids, it seems just about everybody in the country has acid indigestion. What you may not realize, however, is that an overly acidic body is just courting illness or disease. On the scale where human blood must have a pH of 7.4 to be considered healthy and everything above seven is alkaline while everything below is acidic, most of us gobbling Tums® and Rolaids® probably fall somewhere between five and six. Not good. The ability to alkalize our body is one of the most powerful and important ways of interrupting carcinogenic incubations.

Deep green leafy vegetables have that ability! They alkalize the body, a distinct difference from the effect of an antacid, which neutralizes digestive acids, often for hours. Consider this: you have pizza for lunch, get heartburn, pop an antacid. Later, when you eat another one of those hard-on-the-stomach combinations you enjoy so much — like a fast-food burger or even homemade meat and potatoes — those neutralized digestive acids are still unavailable to go to work. Your body hadn’t digested lunch because you neutralized your digestive acids, and now it also can’t digest dinner. The entire day’s food joins the accumulation you’ve already got sitting in your gut, and the whole mess festers. More acid indigestion, requiring more antacids, leading to more poison in your system, creating a more disease-friendly environment. Given enough time: gastroesophageal reflux, diverticulitis, cancer.

Green foods, on the other hand, are not only easily digested, they raise the level of alkalinity in the body to counteract the acidity, all the while helping to detach and flush out any built-up toxins. No surgery, no laboratory-developed drug, no chemically treated supplement can get your digestive tract back on track as easily and effectively as dark green leafy vegetables.

So, eat your spinach. Nibble on your broccoli. Chomp on your celery and enjoy your kale and lettuce and leaks and scallions. And with every bite, remember: you’re taking a step toward protecting yourself against cancer, heart disease, emphysema, diverticulitis, adult-onset diabetes, and many other health problems. In a society that is at once overweight and malnourished, green foods are the best, easiest and most natural weapon we have in the fight to prevent and reverse the trend toward disease.

I would like to thank Bera Dordoni for writing this artilce

What are the most important characteristics of a diet that minimizes cancer risk? The results of animal studies suggest that the single most powerful and consistent dietary influence on carcinogenesis (the ability of cancer to reproduce) is simply energy or calorie restriction. Thus the diet should be low in fat. Various studies have related fat intake to cancer incidence. Animals fed high-fat diets develop cancers more readily than animals on low-fat diets.

Protein intake should be relatively low, since high levels of protein consumption are associated with an increased risk of many diet-responsive cancers, the Western diet is excessively rich in protein. By contrast, dietary fiber intake, which is far too low in the usual Western diet, should be increased.

Processed sugar, by contrast, should be restricted. Sugar, for example, increases the mouth-to-anus transit time and increases the fecal concentration of bile acids; this may explain its association with colon cancer. Also, while complex carbohydrates appear to be protective, sugar intake is directly associated with the risk of breast cancer.

All these dietary goals can be met or approached by simply increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables – which are protective against all the major cancers – while decreasing the consumption of red meat. Generally low in fat and protein and high in fiber, fruit and vegetable consumption can substantially reduce cancer risk. Five servings daily is the absolute minimum recommendation; yet, in the United States, only one in eight adults say they meet that goal. (A serving is, for example, one half cup of chopped raw or cooked vegetables, three-quarters of a cup of juice, or a piece of fruit.)

Smoked, pickled, and salt-cured foods, as well as meats (such as hot dogs) that have an artificial red color, and meats that are broiled or otherwise subjected to high-temperature cooking, should also be minimized. Sources of nitrites, nitrosamines, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which cause cancer in animals, their consumption has been associated with the risk of gastric cancer as well as certain other malignancies such as brain tumors and leukemia.

So who’s ready for some fruit?