Today, inspired by Valerie Boutenko's raw vegan weightloss ideas, I decided to replace my salad's romaine lettuce with a combination of Italian parsley and cilantro. Cilantro is one of those herbs that people either love or hate, and I am a cilantro lover. Still, I was nervous that the salad would be too strong-tasting. I am happy to report that the salad was delicious- the herbs were definitely strong tasting, but they complemented the salad veggies nicely. And let me add, I think I've never had breath this fresh-smelling before (haha!).
I've always chosen romaine over other lettuces for the protein, but according to nutritiondata.com, parsley is a better source of protein, plus its protein is more complete. It has 3 grams of protein per 100 grams while romaine has 1 gram of protein per 100 grams.
What else? Well, 100 grams of parsley has 34% of your day's iron, 14% of your calcium, and is off the charts for vitamins A and C. There were no listed cautions against parsley, but I noticed that it is higher in sodium than is romaine: 56 mg for 100gms of parsley, and 2 for romaine. Another caution might be price- I haven't yet compared the two. (I used about 1/3 of a bunch of cilantro and 1/3 of a bunch of parsley for my salad, stems and all; I believe the entire bunch of Italian parsley was under $1.50. I can't remember the cilantro price). Along with the veggies, all that parsley made for a big salad that will keep me full until evening. Now I'm looking forward to trying curly-leaf parsley because it'll make a very attractive-looking salad.
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