Lettuce: between defenders and detractors
When talking about **lettuce** there are always two groups that end up facing each other. Those who defend him and those who detest him. Among the first we find those who consider lettuce as a wildcard food when they are on a diet or don’t know what to have for dinner and find in a bag of salad the best option to be quick, healthy and economical. Among those who can’t even see it, there are those who claim that it makes them sick and claim that lettuce is difficult to digest, especially at night, making it difficult to sleep.
Why eating salads for dinner can be a bad idea
Nutritionist Júlia Farré confesses that one of the questions she hears almost daily is whether eating lettuce for dinner causes abdominal swelling. That is why he has dedicated a video to this topic on his social networks. Here he explains that “lettuce is basically water. Although it has fiber and other nutrients, it is 90% water. So it is considered a food of low nutritional quality and very few calories”, he says.
Seen like this, then, it makes no sense to think that lettuce is a food that is difficult to digest. “But it can cause some problems when it is a food that is consumed raw,” continues the expert. Lettuce is a vegetable that is eaten raw. When we eat raw food, the stomach has more work to do. In other words, what a saucepan does when cooking food, the stomach must do, nutritionists say about the difficulties that can arise when we consume lettuce, an explanation that gives the truth to those who say that at night they fatal pose If this is your case, this nutritionist’s recommendation is that you consume it at mealtime and forget about it at dinnertime.
Other options that are better
Several studies showed that iceberg lettuce is the one that causes the most gas, which if we add it to the results obtained by another study from Harvard University, in which it was confirmed that this type of lettuce was the one with the least nutrients had, it gives us a clear result: if it makes you sick, don’t eat it, you’re not missing anything.
But eating a salad for dinner is not only a common thing in summer because it’s fresh, it’s also very healthy and quick to prepare. That’s why, when you want to have a salad for dinner, choose the varieties that are easier to digest. In this list, at the top we find arugula and spinach. Both more interesting options nutritionally and with a lower rate when talking about digestive problems.
Another solution is to reduce the amount of raw leaves and enrich this bowl with cooked foods (which don’t have to be hot). Canned tuna, roasted peppers, fresh cheese, pickles (rich in probiotics) or even a hard-boiled egg or baked potato are options that provide flavor, nutrients and help reduce abdominal bloating. Finally, although not least, is to pay attention to the sauces and complements. When these are spicy, very dense or rich in sugar, digestion becomes difficult, and it is not fair that we only blame the lettuce leaves. Every ingredient you add to the dish counts, for better or for worse.
