Thank you for all the congratulatory messages you sent. You are highly appreciated.
I present to you, Mr Abdul Lateef Agboola, the man behind the video about Ocimum gratissimum (scent leaf/ efinrin) and Crassocephalum crepidioides (ebolo) for kidney disease. I was lucky to get him and we had a lengthy conversation.
His discussions with me ranged from misconceptions about herbs usage to our bad eating habits which are a major reason for ill-health and lots more.
He told me that after he made the video, a lot of people actually used the two vegetables the way he instructed and they called back to thank him.
The most interesting part for me was when he said that the person who used the vegetables before he made the video had undergone dialysis twice. He said the man got better later.
What we do here is what I call preventive medicine, so I will advise that people who do not have kidney disease should also be boiling these two vegetables and be drinking the water like tea.
I have some things to say more on this video. Crassocephalum crepidioides (ebolo) grows in the wild and is mostly seen during the raining season. Some individuals also cultivate it. However, you cannot compare it with Amaranthus hybridus known as “ efo tete “ and popularly called “green vegetable” which is the commercial amaranth widely cultivated all over Nigeria and is available all year round.
This is why gardening is very important. You can grow your own ebolo. I did not throw away the stems of the ones I bought this year. I dipped them into the soil and they sprouted! By the time they start flowering, there will be seeds on them. The seeds can be propagated too.
One of the pages on Facebook posted the video called “Ebolo” “Corriander.” This is wrong.
Coriander, botanically known as Coriandrum sativum is a feathery annual plant of the parsley family Apiaceae. The name, coriander, is usually used to refer to the dry fruits and seeds while the plant’s delicate young leaves are known as “cilantro”.
Ebolo, which is botanically known as Crassocephalum crepidioides, belongs to the family Asteraceae. It is a special pot vegetable among the Yoruba and is distinguished by its fragrance about which the Yoruba weighty wisecrack “No treatment can remove the fragrance of ebolo which is from its source, the wild” was coined!
You can now see that “ ebolo” is not Coriander. Are you among those who hate “ ebolo” because of its unique fragrance? You need to love it now, let us continue to boil it with scent leaf/ and take the water as tea.
As we boil the two, their synergistically produced effect will rub off on our health.
Have you had the rainbow on your plate before? Never mind, we are not going to the sky to take the rainbow, I am only trying to encourage you to always have an array of different colours of fruits and vegetables on your plate at all times.
Plants contain different pigments or phytonutrients, which in addition to giving many fruits and veggies their eye-catching hues also promote good health.
While eating more vegetables and fruit is always a good idea, focusing on eating a variety of colours will increase your intake of different nutrients to benefit various areas of your health.
“Different colours are indicative of different nutrient content,” said Dennis Miller, professor of food chemistry and nutrition at Cornell University. Even among the same kind of fruit or vegetable, colour seems to matter. Orange sweet potatoes, Miller said, have high amounts of beta-carotene, whereas white sweet potatoes do not. Red peppers contain almost 11 times as much beta-carotene as their green counterparts”.
Joe Schwarcz, director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University says “because we don’t know which compound specifically is beneficial, the best bet is to eat across the spectrum,”
A study of more than 77,000 people, which was published in July 2021 online in the journal Neurology found that participants who consumed the most flavonoid-rich foods (flavonoids are the largest group of phytonutrients) had a 20 per cent lower risk of cognitive decline than those who ate the least.
More specifically, the study found that those who ate the most anthocyanins (a type of flavonoid found in blue, purple, red and even black foods) had a 24 per cent lower risk of cognitive decline, and those who ate the most flavones (a type of flavonoid in orange- and yellow-hued foods) had a 38 per cent lower risk of decline than those who ate the lowest amounts of these foods.
Additionally, as Harvard Medical School discusses, a higher score on their Alternative Healthy Eating Index (which is rich in colourful fruits and veggies) is associated with a lower risk of chronic diseases, including a 40 per cent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 33 per cent lower risk of diabetes. It is clear that eating a rainbow, or as close as you can get to it, yields big health benefits.
Now that it has been confirmed that eating food from all across the colour spectrum is good for your health, let us look at some of these colours and the phytonutrients they contain :
- Red
Examples of fruits and vegetables that are red in colour are: tomatoes, watermelon, pink guava and grapefruit.
Main phytonutrients in them is called Lycopene (from the vitamin A family).
Main vitamins and minerals in them are folate, potassium, vitamin A (lycopene), vitamin C, vitamin K1
The health benefits are anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, they may benefit heart health, may reduce sun-related skin damage and may lower your risk of certain cancers.
- Orange and yellow
Fruits and veggies
Examples of fruits that are orange and yellow in colour are carrots, sweet potatoes, yellow peppers, bananas, pineapple tangerines and pumpkin.
Main phytonutrients in them are carotenoids (e.g beta carotene, alpha carotene, beta cryptoxanthin) which belong to the vitamin A family.
They contain Fiber, folate, potassium, vitamin A (beta carotene), vitamin C
The health benefits are anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, may benefit heart health, supports eye health and may lower your risk of cancer.
3. Green
Examples of fruits and vegetables that are green are all leafy vegetables, then cruciferous like: kale, broccoli, green cabbage, brussel sprouts. Avocados and asparagus are among.
Main phytonutrients in leafy greens are chlorophyll and carotenoids.
Cruciferous greens (e.g., broccoli, cabbage) contain indoles, isothiocyanates, glucosinolates
Main vitamins and minerals are fiber, folate, magnesium, potassium, vitamin A (beta carotene) and vitamin K1
Health benefits are anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant.
Cruciferous veggies, in particular, may lower your risk of cancer and heart disease.
A study titled Colours are Indicators of Phytochemical Components and Medicinal Properties of Plants: A Review of Natural Spectroscopy by Saganuwan Alhaji Saganuwan concludes that primary colours; red, green and blue denote different phytochemical compounds which are bases of the medicinal values of the plant parts that exhibit the colours. Plants and plant parts with black colour may have anticancer effects whereas plant parts with white colour may have anti-diabetic, anti-asthmatic, antihypertensive and antioxidant activities. Plants with yellow, red, purple, pink and cyan colour may have antimicrobial and antioxidant activities.
