Kale

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 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 this benefit could get lost when cooking these vegetables, unless we follow an important trick. See, cruciferous vegetables don’t have sulforaphane per se, they have its two ingredients: glucosinolates and an enzyme named myrosinase. When we chew our vegetable, the myrosinase enzyme activates the glucosinolates, resulting in sulforaphane. But it takes 40 minutes between the moment we chew our vegetables to the moment when sulforaphane is formed in our stomach. If we cook our vegetables, though, the heat can deactivate the myrosinase enzyme, and so sulforaphane would never be formed, unless we chop our vegetables, wait 40 minutes, and then cook them. Sulforaphane is resistant to heat, so once formed, we can cook our vegetable, eat it, and reap its anti-cancer benefits.