Seven underrated foods that do more than fill space in the salad bowl.

– By Selene Yeager

If broccoli and spinach are the rock stars of the vegetable world, then corn and celery are the stagehands, working hard outside the limelight. For years we’ve dismissed these pale staples as nutritionally barren, focusing our attention on their brighter, more colorful kin. Today we know better.

“We’ve done a disservice to a lot of common vegetables,” says Liz Applegate, PhD. “All vegetables have nutritional value. And every vegetable contains potent chemicals that help it survive. When you eat them, you get those chemicals. We are always discovering new phytochemicals that may fight cancer and heart disease, so it’s wise to eat a large variety of vegetables every day.”