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G'day G'day Anil,

 Delighted to have a post from you. I enjoy your emphasis on
assimilating vegetables into the diet. OK, for you it might not be
assimilating vegetables into the diet but for most Westerners it is.
It is somewhere their thought patterns don't readily go. When planning
a meal I know I am most likely to think of what meat I will cook
first. For some people I guess it is what beans they will soak.
Fresh herbs tend to get left to last and risk being forgotten.

Go for it.  I was staggered to find that as little as one Spring onion
per day could lower the risk of a bloke developed prostate cancer.  It
takes so little of quite common vegetables to achieve so much. It is
simply the doing on a regular basis that counts. Like you once I had
adopted the idea I was surprised at how easy it was to chop up a half
dozen Spring onions and toss them into a casserole.  Half a bunch of
coriander disappeared into some tomato soup when it was nearly readily
on the stove. It is easy ... if it is a habit.

Another habit I have developed ... for better of worse is to include
chutneys. If I'm not mistaken the very word chutney is of Indian
origin. Yesterday I bought a jar of tamarillo chutney.  You might not
know tamarillos but they are intensely coloured fruit rich in the red
pigment beta-cryptoxanthin.  If only I could get every woman in New
Zealand to eat the equivalent of a tamarillo per day we could reduce
the incidence of cervical cancer by about 40%. Tamarillos are rather
acid to the taste but this makes them fabulous for chutneys.  Will I
doubt I could ever prise the recipe out of Cherry and Carlo DeNigri
for their tamarillo chutney, my taste bud tell me it is rich in
cinnamon and cloves, two of the best anti-oxidant packed spices going.
Well, my point is part of successful diets, whether paleolithic or
vegetarian is making them palatable. The intelligent approach IMHO is
to ensure that what we habitually do to make them palatable also
benefits us health wise.

In old English, there is a phrase, "A right old understanding."  It is
usually the sort of thing that people arrive at after what secretaries
abbreviate to "a free and frank discussion took place on the merits
and lack there of, of the proposal"   Neither of us like the idea of
supplements.  Both of us find eating traditional foods that might or
might not have some health benefit OK if we abide by the safety rules
set out by those same traditions. It is a case of little harm, some
benefit. A positive attitude is a positive attitude, dude, however we
come by it.

Yep.  I do much admire you Anil.
You state what is reasonable and avoid saying what isn't.
It is a skill we all need to master IMHO.

LOL.  I just bet someone is wishing you would try hemlock.  They have
issues they will have to live with.  We don't.  Most people who adopt
a common sense approach to things find have also adopted a high safety
margin.  The smartest thing humans have learnt to do is to be
adaptable.  It is amazed me to find that in some primitive cultures
the people ate up to a hundred different green plants.  They picked
the plants while they were young and tender and moved onto some other
greens when they were not.  What researchers noted was two fold. In
general, the older plants produced more toxins to protect themselves.
By changing greens with the seasons the humans were moving before the
toxins in an particular plant built up to dangerous levels. There was
enough to give the immune system for example a jolly up without doing
permanent damage. Of course like you, I fully intend to give myself a
wide safety margin by choosing herbs that are generally accepted as
safe, parsley, cilantro, celery, dill, basil, hyssop, chop suey
greens, shiso.

Thanks Anil, your post has cheered me considerably.