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 metabolism, our eyes, and our immunity.
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.
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.
Raw cruciferous vegetables are a fantastic source of sulforaphane, but cooking them could deactivate one of the two compounds needed to make sulforaphane: myrosinase enzyme. There is a way around this, though. Simply chop your kale and wait 40 minutes before you cook it. Chopping it activates sulphoraphane, and once activated, the heat won’t hurt it. When we eat it raw, we activate sulphoraphane by chewing.
Try our personalized nutrition calculator below to see just how much nutrition you and your family can get from eating kale.
Nutrition Calculator: Kale
Use our personalized nutrition calculator to discover the percentage of daily nutrition needs you and your family can get from eating kale.
Nutrition needs vary according to age, sex, and whether women of reproductive age are pregnant or breastfeeding. Fill out the form below for yourself and for your family members to get personalized results.*
* Calculated as a percentage of the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs) as established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Based on nutritional information provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an average of multiple raw and cooked kale samples.