Eating habits, nutritionists say, are an important aspect of dietary quality and long-term health. Eating your greens or salad first is one good eating behaviour that people should adapt to. Alexis Mucumbitsi, the head of the Nutrition and Hygiene Department in the National Early Childhood Care and Development Program (NECDP), says one way to ensure that you eat greens is to enjoy them as a starter. In doing so, he says, you will most likely finish all of the greens because you are hungry. This may cause one to eat a reduced amount of less healthy components of the meal later. More importantly, studies revealed that consuming vegetables during the early phase of a meal led to not only reduced meal energy intake but also increased vegetable intake. Filling up on vegetables can help slow your carbohydrate digestion and possibly help with eating smaller portions too. Photos/Net Mucumbitsi says consuming greens before meals can lead to eating fewer and healthier calories overall, which could result in weight loss. “Eating vegetables, especially before a carb-rich meal, has been shown to have beneficial effects on blood sugar levels. It slows down the speed at which carbs are absorbed into the bloodstream and may benefit both short and long-term blood sugar control in people with diabetes,” he says. Studies have also shown that similarly to protein, vegetables can help with keeping your weight down as your insulin spike is inhibited and you feel fuller faster. Emmy Ntamanga, a Kigali-based nutrition consultant, says vegetables are full of fibre and when you consume the greens first, everything you eat after gets covered with this fibre, which is believed to slow down insulin spikes and the speed that sugar is transported into the blood. He goes on to note that greens also make one full fast because the fibre in them is absorbing all the liquid in the stomach. Ntamanga says raw vegetables contain a certain digestive enzyme that helps break down proteins, so one may consider eating more raw greens than cooked. Vegetables are also said to be good for healthy skin. “Protein is hard to digest, so it stays in the stomach too long, forcing other foods to remain in the stomach, and slowing down digestion,” he says. Nutritionists advise that with this plan, start with vegetables and then go on to the rest. The most important thing is to always strive to eat vegetables first before any other meal.
