Wednesday 26 March 2008

The big E

I spent Easter weekend at a hotel event with all the possible dietary pitfalls that ensue. It wasn’t in the end, too bad. A good breakfast buffet will usually supply natural yogurt and fruit, and there was a buffet dinner which always included mounds of vegetables. I took emergency supplies of canned salmon, canned asparagus and almonds just in case! On my return I was convinced I had eaten too much over the weekend, and stepped on the scales in some trepidation this morning to find I had lost a few ounces. Not sure how I managed that.

Here is my champion Vitamin E list – values as before are the % of my RDA supplied per 120 calories which is 10% of my daily intake. V8 vegetable juice, 99, swiss chard 80, spinach 71, sunflower seeds 45, red peppers 41, almonds and broccoli 37, pumpkin 33, butternut squash 26 tomatoes 24. Almost in the super range are kiwi and hazelnuts 19, avocado 18. Scoring well, green peppers and lettuce 15, celery and apricots 14, aubergine (eggplant) 10.

4 comments:

artemis said...

Which V8 vegetable juice do you use? The only ones I can find with tested high levels of vitamin E are the ones that are supplemented with vitamin E, such as V8 essential antioxidants (which I then wouldn't really count as a high vitamin E food, since you could add a vitamin E pill to any food and make it a good source).

Linda said...

It's V8 100% original vegetable juice - see www.v8juice.co.uk - ingredients listed tomatoes 87%, carrot celery beetroot parsley lettuce watercress and spinach with salt and spice extracts. And not an added vitamin in sight! I would never use anything with added vitamin E as they would only be adding alpha tocopherol, which would not be a balanced additive. The salt level is not high - a litre of juice gives 18% of my daily sodium. Not sure where you ar based but we may be having the eternal problem of some products not crossing the big pond.

artemis said...

That's interesting since the V8 100% original we get has no vitamin E and the UK website does not list any for it either.

Does yours list vitamin E on the label?

E.g. for the nonfortified V8 100% vegetable juice nutrition facts are listed here

The one fortified with alpha tocopherol does have it of course: here

Where did you get your figures for vitamin E for it?

Linda said...

Artemis - thanks for pointing that out - I found the figures on the internet, and must have used the ones for the fortified version - which I wasn't even aware existed - we only have the 100% vegetable plus two fruit varieties here. I will make a correction on the blog. The basic one still has to supply some vitamin E and potassium but it doesn't say how much. I might write to the manufacturers and ask though my success in the past with that kind of approach has been NIL!