Happy New Year and welcome to the Beginners Garden podcast. This is episode number 400. And to begin our

ninth season on the Beginners Garden podcast, I am joined by my dear friend, Dr. Vicki Pets, Casper.

And just as fitting for beginning a new year, we are going to talk all about protein. But before we get

there, welcome, Vicki.

Thank you so much. Just a little bit of a background between me and Vicki. We have known each

other for about 15 years. She was my OBGYN doctor with my daughter, delivered my daughter.

She's 14 years old now. But then after having to take a medical retirement, we actually got to know each other

better as personal friends because we were in similar writers groups together.

And before we start talking about protein, I have to mention this because regular

listeners to the podcast are going to queue in on this.

And that is, you were the one in one of those writers groups meetings at your

house who introduced me to arugula and pickled beets. And now they are part of my daily salads,

my daily diet. I had not ever eaten that before you introduced them to me. So before we get

into protein, I would love for you to share what are the health benefits of these two parts of my

salad that I eat every day? That is so awesome. You should have really good blood pressure

because both arugula and beets contain polyphenols and they contain nitrates. And both of those

help with nitrous oxide, which relaxes your blood vessels and makes them open up.

So the biggest benefit you're going to get is you should never have high blood pressure.

And they also reduce inflammation, which is responsible for so many diseases that we encounter.

Going back to just arugula, how does it differ nutritionally from other leafy greens,

or is it similar to what we might eat in our salads otherwise? It's similar to the dark green

leafy vegetables, and I think that's an important distinction, something like iceberg lettuce

...