The Eye Health Benefit of Spinach plus Spinach Pizza and Dip Recipes

Eye health is so important. Everyday it is normal to take our eyesight for granted, because we just get on with our daily lives, however, sometimes I stop and think what it might like to be blind, and I curl at the thought of living in a dark world and being totally dependable on others. As we grow older, so do our eyes. Indeed, they deteriorate with age.  In fact, my father in law, who is 84 years old really struggles with his eyesight, to the point where he can no longer drive or read; even simple tasks such as hammering a nail to a wall and seeing the food on his plate is hard.  This is very sad and means he has  become more and more dependable on my mother in law.  He has been diagnosed with a disease called AMD - age-related macular degeneration- which is a debilitating eye disease.

AMD is when cells in the retina are damaged. Free radicals cause the damage to the cells which makes our vision more blurred preventing us from seeing detail. AMD can also distort the images the eyes see by causing debris to build up under the retina.  AMD doesn't cause blindness, but it disrupts vision enough to be declared legally blind, like my father in law.  

AMD affects 2.4% of the adult population in the UK - that's 513,000 people affected.  It is much more common in people over the age of 50.  It is the most common cause of sight loss in the developed world.

So what has all this doom and gloom got to do with spinach? Basically, scientific experiments have shown that spinach helps prevent AMD, and also it can improve the vision of someone already with AMD.  Spinach is packed full of antioxidants, dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals incl folic acid.  But it is the chemicals called lutein and zeaxanthin that spinach contains which are the elements that restore the macular pigment in our eyes.  Egg yolks contain these elements, as well as kale, but I wanted to focus on spinach for this blog article because spinach is more flexible and versatile; it can be used in so many types of recipes.

Lutein is absorbed by our bodies better when it is eaten with a little bit of fat, and when we eat spinach on its own, much less is absorbed, due to a chemical present in spinach called oxalic acid.  So this is the cue for my spinach recipes!!

Firstly, spinach is great on a pizza! One myth I want to destroy is that pizzas are always unhealthy.  Yes, they most likely are, however, I have come up with my own pizza recipe, where the whole pizza is under 600 calories.  This is because for the base, I use a wholemeal tortilla wrap, and the topping is a mixture of light, healthy ingredients, including using low fat pesto mixed with tomato puree for the paste (tomato puree is low calorie anyway), and half fat mozzarella cheese.
Take a look at the recipe here: for a video of my own healthy take on spinach pizza:-

Ingredients: Seeded tortilla wraps, 2-3 tbsps reduced fat pesto, 2-3 tbsps concentrated tomato puree, 2 x tomatoes, shredded chicken breast, spinach, low fat mozzarrella cheese.

Also try this delicious spinach creamy dip. I've used avocados as the healthy fat, so this helps us to absorb lutein, zeaxanthin and iron more efficiently.  It is great to accompany an appetizer, starter or dip at a party.  The trick here is that the avocado is used as the element to make it really creamy, and the garlic adds spiciness to it!  Mmmmm...

Ingredients:
150g spinach, 1 avocado, 1 spring onion, 2 small (or 1 large) cloves of garlic, handful of fresh coriander, 1 lime including zest, sea salt, pepper, cress as a garnish.

I hope you have found this blog article informative.  My aim is to help my husband to eat more spinach in creative ways, because I'm hoping that there will be an improvement in the thickness of the macular pigment in his retinas.  Thanks so much for reading this, I hope I've inspired you to help protect your eyes and the eyes' of someone you love. Feel free to subscribe to my youtube channel here and also please visit my Instagram page, my facebook page, my pinterest page and my twitter account.

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