How nutritious is lettuce?

Today I got a salad, It had a huge bed of Lettuce , 2 cherry tomatoes, a small quantity of gratted carrots ,2 brocolli pieces and 1 cawliflower piece. I ate the tomatoes, carrots, brocolli and cawliflower. Now there is too much lettuce and I wondered if I should eat that ...does it have any nurtritious value ...so below is my research. Hope it would help some of you.

How nutritious is lettuce?

Providing only six to 20 calories per cup, lettuce and other salad greens should be considered a nutritional bargain and a great way to get in one of your five servings of fruits and vegetables each day, says Janice Baranowski, a research dietitian with the USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. One cup of raw salad greens counts as a serving of vegetables in the USDA's Food Guide Pyramid.

As a rule of thumb, the outer leaves as well as lettuce varieties that are dark green and reddish in color are the most nutritious. But even popular, but pale, iceberg lettuce provides water, fiber, folate, and small amounts of other important vitamins and minerals like zinc and potassium.

To bump up the nutritional quality of the salads you serve, try tossing in some deeply colored salad greens. Spinach, watercress, Lamb's lettuce, and dandelion greens are loaded with beta-carotene, a pigment our bodies can convert to vitamin A. Dandelion greens, endive, chicory, romaine, and spinach also provide plenty of folate, a vitamin many consider an important nutrient for cardiovascular health. Darkly hued leaf lettuce, spinach, lamb's lettuce, and mustard, beet and dandelion greens are rich in iron. Also, don't forget nutritious additions like vitamin C-rich tomatoes, broccoli and green pepper, beta carotene-rich carrots, nuts, seeds, and raisins.