Cucumber and celery juice can provide lots of beneficial vitamins and minerals, along with many of the benefits of eating these nutrient-rich vegetables.

Next time you buy celery, save the leaves to eat alone or incorporate into recipes. Celery leaves offer nutritional value that can boost your health. Celery leaves make a good choice for weight-loss diets because they are low in calories and provide vitamins, minerals, fiber and macronutrients.

Celery -- scientific name Apium graveolens -- is a plant whose crisp green stalks are eaten both raw and cooked. Native to the Mediterranean region, it's been cultivated since ancient Greek times. Celery is a common component of weight-loss diets, as it's low in calories and high in nutrients.

While celery works perfectly as the ubiquitous swizzle in a bloody Mary cocktail or the healthy, go-to lunchbox vegetable, it also works either raw or cooked in soups, stews and salads and side dishes.

Celery and parsley come from the same botanical family as carrots, parsnips, dill, fennel and hundreds of other well-known plants.

Celery contains certain toxins called psoralens with potentially carcinogenic effects and goitrogens with potentially anti-thyroid effects. Celery is also one of the vegetables highest in pesticide content, unless it is organically grown, and is vulnerable to a kind of mold called mycotoxins.