Leafy green vegetables of all kinds (not including iceberg lettuce) head the list of nutritional bargains; they're full of health-enhancing ingredients and nearly empty of calories. But spinach is near the top of the list. As versatile as it is delicious, it offers an easy way to incorporate more green goodness into your diet.

Spinach and other leafy greens are top sources of vitamins C and E and the carotenoids lutein, alpha-carotene, and beta-carotene. All are powerful antioxidants that help neutralize dangerous free radicals and help lower risk of heart disease, strokes, cancer, and cataracts.

Researchers have found that people who eat leafy greens such as spinach are apt to have a lower risk of stomach, skin, prostate, lung, and bladder cancers. For example, a recent study showed that people over age sixty-six who ate the most vegetables rich in carotenes had two-thirds fewer deaths from cancer within the next five years than people who ate the least.

Spinach's high levels of folic acid and other B vitamins work to keep the body's natural compounds in balance. In particular, they help regulate homocysteine, an amino acid that can become toxic at high levels, contributing to clogged arteries and heart disease. A major study found that people with the highest levels of homocysteine in their blood were three times more likely to have heart attacks than those with lower levels.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the number-one cause of irreversible blindness among American adults. The good news: A recent study found that people who often ate spinach or collard greens were at the lowest risk for AMD-up to 43 percent lower risk, to be exact. Most interestingly, their risk was lower than that of people who ate other carotene-rich foods.

Try to eat spinach a couple of times a week; more than that and you'll risk consuming too many mineral-inhibiting oxalates. Warning! People with gout or kidney or bladder stones should avoid spinach because of its oxalates.

Frozen spinach retains more nutrients than older fresh spinach. Canned spinach retains most nutrients except folic acid.

Many people think that if certain foods are good, a lot is better.
This is not always the case, and high doses of certain food are actually toxic.

Read about the healthy food, research the vitamins and minerals and check with your health care provider if you are unsure about how much to eat and how much may be too much.

The best way to get the daily requirement of 13 essential vitamins is to eat a balanced diet that contains a variety of foods and take a "Standardized" (quality) multivitamin supplement.