Is lettuce a waste to eat since it's low calorie and won't provide much energy?

Vegetables like lettuce are low calorie and  provide very little nutrition!
NOT TRUE!

This is a complete misconception about low calorie vegetables.

There are phytonutrients.. 
You need to learn a lot about nutrition apparently if you think lettuce has no value. We are not machines that just eat for energy. Our objective to eat, is more complicated than most understand. It's not just calorie in---calorie out equation or the RDA nutrients in a food. There's other factors in the equation.

Green vegetables alkalize the body. A process necessary for oxygen in the cells. It's a main reason meat and dairy diets are prone to cancer and other disease.

While lettuce is not typically a stand alone vegetable, the value of it's phytonutrients can't be understated.
 ~Neal Russell Vanderstelt

According to livestrong.com article by Brian Connelly:
"All four types of green lettuce contain phytonutrients, antioxidants that have been linked to preventing chronic diseases, such as heart disease and cancer. According to Colorado State University, romaine lettuce and green leaf lettuce from the looseleaf family ranked the highest in antioxidants as well as vital nutrients. According to the study, romaine lettuce contained the highest quantities of vitamin C, potassium, folic acid and lutein, while green leaf ranked the highest in vitamin K, niacin and riboflavin. Both lettuces contained more than 3,000 micrograms of beta carotene per 100 grams serving."

What are Phytonutrients?

Notes:
Cruciferous vegetables is a very healthy dietary choice.

Kale is a powerhouse cruciferous vegetable.

Pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, solvents, and heavy metals can be toxic to the body in that they have the ability to mimic hormones and we call these toxins endocrine disruptors.

Endocrine disruptors are found in our water supply, soil, and low quality food.

According to Dr. Theo Colborn, 1/10 of a trillion of a gram can cause effects on our boddies.

How can our bodies get rid of these toxins?
The liver does an incredible job of removing toxins from the body, but it can get overloaded. 

Enzymes are required by the liver to break down toxins.  

These enzymes are present in cruciferious vegetables. 

Video Attributes:
Dr. Eric Berg DC
November 2011

Phytochemicals as Healing Dietary Components in Combating Chronic Disease


What seems to be the big secrete in food is food color, which is devoid in the typical American Diet. But it doesn't have to be that way...  You can choose to eat for color by choosing vegan foods. Foods that have essential energies from the sun, that are transformed by these 'higher frequency foods' that provide a direct link to health.  We are looking for foods that have natural colors (not died).

Each food color has a meaning as to what nutritional value it can provide beyond just calories, carbs, proteins, or fats---basic energy types.. There's a time to think about eating for calories, but most of the time it's not the calories that we need to worry about, but the food color and what those colors really mean. And many times when people keep craving food, we are not looking for energy specifically, but nutritional value beyond one dimensional energy.  Were looking for that high frequency stuff that our cells crave to do micro task and healing..

The old belief is that food is calories. Many still believe in this one-dimensional view of food and they don't eat for it's finer nutritional value, which is not just defined by calorie, carbohydrate, fat, or protein.  Food has multi-dimensional values far beyond these primitive definitions.  We want to not just think about calories of a food, more importantly we want to think of how each food in question will affect our cells and what the micro properties can do.

Calories.. that's just thermodynamics at work. We are talking health benefit of food here and well beyond the macro energy structure of food.  Your body stores energy too so a lot of times we are eating for nutrients.

Phytonutrients (also called Phytochemicals) are chemicals produced by plants. Foods high in these mirco nutrients are what we want in our diet. Foods void of these micro nutrients or foods that cause some type of bad effect like: inflammation, acidity, or bad digestion are what we must avoid to have good health of the body, soul, and mind...

We need to talk about food color.. Not dyed color, but natural food color that our healthy vegan foods get naturally from the sun, which unlocks huge potentials to our health.
~Neal Russell Vanderstelt 

Video Attributes: 
Inflammation: Phytochemicals as healing dietary components in combating chronic disease
Deanna Minch, PhD, FACN, CNS
American College of Nutrition
November 2013

Notes:

Food is more than calories---it is information...

80% of Americans have a "phytonutrient gap"---- a color gap
69% fall short in Green Foods
78% fall short in Red Foods
86% fall short in White Foods
88% fall short in Purple/Blue Foods
79% fall short in Yellow/Orange Foods

*plant compounds have a ripple effect.  Reducing inflammation helps reduce stress because they are intertwined.  Insulin resistance has an effect from stress.

*Just one meal can provoke something like acute metabolic endotoxemia
*A phenol rich diet of just a few days can change the levels of anti-oxidants dramatically.

Phytonutrient Amount (mg/g)
Carrots (Dehydrated/1cup) 106,917
Kale (Steamed or Raw 1 cup) 48,776
Papaya ()
Parsley ()
Cocoa (1 cup ground) - 9,481
Cinnamon (ground 1 tablespoon) 8,108
Turmeric ()
Curcumin ()

Bio-availability of Beta-Carotene
Bioaccessibility
Papaya has a 3x better bioavailability than carrots or tomatoes.
Lycopene was 2-6x better more bioavailable from papayas than tomatoes.

Yellow-green food phytochemicals
 Lutin, Indoles, Chlorophyll, Phytomethylators, Phytosterols, Phytoestrogens....

Health benefits:
Letein --- helps maintain good vision; reduces risk of cataracts or macular degeneration.
Indoles ---Reduces risk of cancer; reduce risk of tumor growth in cancer patients.
Chlorophyll --- Powerful antioxidant
Phytomethylators --- Methylation; cell growth.
Phytosterols --- Cholesterol reduction; Anti-inflammatory; Reduce cancer risk.
Phytoestrogens --- May act as an estrogen agonist

Foods:
Lutein --- Basil, Parsley, Spinach, Kale....

*Inflammatory effects reduced / reduced vasoconstriction, because of an avocado to meal containing a poor food choice.

*Avocados contain more potassium than a bananas.

*Olive oil contains bioactives that have been studied for anti-inflammatory effect.

Bitter phytochemicals... 
Bitter taste receptor polymorphisms
25+ types of receptors.... how well our anti-oxidant system works..