Broccoli – Love or Hate It, It’s a Sensational Health Food

Broccoli has long been a poster child for healthy food. Sadly, it’s also been the target of mockery due to its slightly bitter flavor. Beyond its reputation, the reality is that when introduced early in life, broccoli often becomes a favorite health food for children.

But, what makes it such a paragon of health food? For starters, broccoli is a top source of vitamin C and vitamin K. It’s also very rich in vitamin B5, vitamin B6, folate, and potassium. And it provides a good amount of protein, fiber, thiamin, riboflavin, magnesium, manganese, and phosphorus. So, broccoli is fantastic for our bones, our heart, our immunity, our brain, our muscles, our early development, our metabolism, our red blood cells, our overall blood health, and our genes.

But wait! Broccoli is also a great source of lutein and zeaxanthin, two carotenoids that can protect our eyes from macular degeneration due to age, including cataracts. And there’s more! Broccoli is a member of the cabbage family, and as such, it is very rich in sulforaphane, a potent anti-cancer compound present in all cruciferous vegetables. 

Be sure to wait 40 minutes between chopping your broccoli and cooking it, to ensure the sulforaphane is activated before one of its elements is deactivated by heat. When eaten raw, sulforaphane gets activated by chewing on our vegetable and then sitting in our stomach waiting to get digested.

We can enjoy broccoli raw with hummus, steamed, as an ingredient in pasta or other main dishes, and in soup. The popular broccoli soup can be made 100% whole-foods, plant-based.

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