Use fruits and vegetables completely?

From leaf to root: Use with fruits and vegetables?
It is the power of habit: anyone who prepares fresh fruits and vegetables throws carrot greens, celery leaves, cucumber peels and pumpkin seeds in the garbage. "Too bad to throw away," say the followers of the new trend "From Leaf to Root". Translated it means "from leaf to root". The idea is not just to throw away edible parts of fruits and vegetables like shells, leaves, roots and stalks, but to use them with them. Cookbooks are now dedicated exclusively to this topic, and on the Internet there are recipe suggestions on how to use melon bowls and avocado seeds. Someone wrinkles his nose and asks himself: is that okay?

Use everything with vegetables and fruits? (Image: Prostock-studio / fotolia.com)

In fact, vegetable waste can be avoided simply by avoiding peeling in some types of fruit and vegetables. So you can eat cucumbers, carrots, parsnips, radishes and kiwis after thorough washing with peel. From the leaves of savoy cabbage and kale can be prepared, for example, chips. Vegetable remains such as onions, celery, carrots, fennel, radishes, leek or mushrooms can be used for a vegetable broth: For this you collect the remains in freezer bags in the freezer until enough for a pot of broth together. Even pumpkin seeds and papaya cores are - properly processed - edible.

But are all plant parts harmless to health? Professor Sabine Kulling of the Max Rubner Institute (MRI) advises caution: "Plant parts such as carrot greens or kohlrabi leaves are little studied for residues because they are not considered foodstuffs, so it can not be excluded that they contain pesticides or other undesirable substances could be burdened. "

It is also questionable what effect the preparation has on the plant's own compounds. The fact that raw green beans contain toxic substances that are destroyed during cooking and then harmless is known. However, such properties are not (yet) known from all constituents of all types of fruit and vegetables. Therefore: If you want to try stalk, stem & Co., you should first inform yourself well. Hedda Thielking, bzfe