Kale Nutrition

Kale has been a synonym of healthy eating since around 2010. Endorsed by many celebrities and hip restaurants as a super food, it soon became a popular ingredient in salads, smoothies, soups, and it made one of the most popular healthy snacks out there: kale chips.

Today, other foods have taken the spotlight, but kale is still every bit as good for us as it was during its first years of stardom. For instance, kale is a fantastic source of vitamin K, vitamin C, potassium, omega 3, manganese, and calcium. This means that kale is excellent for our bones, our brain, our heart, our muscles, our metabolism, our eyes, and our immune system.

While the texture is harder than spinach, and the flavor is more bitter, kale is a taste worth acquiring. Plus, kale has a big advantage against spinach, it is low in oxalates which means that kale is a good source of calcium, whereas the calcium in spinach is bound to its oxalates and therefore is unavailable to us. And, just as spinach, kale is rich in lutein and zeaxanthin, which are great for our eyes. Ingesting these nutrients regularly can in fact protect our eyes from macular degeneration due to age, including cataracts.

A Cruciferous Plant

When it comes to immunity, kale has a special super power: sulforaphane. Yes, kale is a member of the cruciferous family, which is basically the cabbage family. All cruciferous veggies provide us with the strong anti-cancer phytochemical, sulforaphane. Since cancer is the second top cause of death in the U.S., it’s very important to increase our defenses against it.

Keep in mind that sulforaphane is actually made by cruciferous vegetables when they’re in distress, such as when we chew or chop them. But there’s a catch, while raw cruciferous vegetables are a fantastic source of sulforaphane because it gets formed in our stomach after we chew them, heat deactivates one of the two compounds needed by the plant to make sulforaphane. This means we could be eating our cooked kale and missing out on this key nutrient! There is a way around it, though. Simply chop your kale and wait 40 minutes before you cook it. Once sulforaphane is formed, heat won’t hurt it, so you’ll be able to cook your kale and reap the sulforaphane benefits too! 

Try our personalized kale nutrition calculator below to see just how much of your nutritional requirements you and your family can get from eating kale.