Kale is King

Kale is becoming a regular staple among the organic leafy greens available at Breadroot. Its popularity comes from its combination of taste and nutritional benefits. Excerpts from some books that have cited kale and the health benefits of leafy grees are featured in the newsletter to highlight this special vegetable.

Dark leafy greenslike kale often reach their lowest prices of the year in the winter months, making them an affordable addition to your diet. Kale can be eaten fresh, the ends of the leaves being most tender, but it is probably most often cooked a bit to tenderize. Kale can stand in place of spinach or chard in many reicpes, and when eaten plain it is noted to have a milder flavor than the pungent collards, mustard and turnip greens. Kale can be juiced as whole leaves, or the stems can be saved for juicing from the recipes which call for leaves. The Juiceman, Jay Kordich, recommends juicing kale and parsley with carrot and apple for Bone-Building Tonic.

Superhero Vegetable - Kale

(from Foods That Fight Disease by Laurie Mozian, MS,RD, Avery, 2000, p80)

Kale is a superhero vegetable. If you can develop a liking for its slightly bitter taste, this leafy green will pay you back with a truckload of nutrients. It can be found in a variety of colors, but the most commonly found is the deep-green variety. It is among the fruits and vegetables with the highest known antioxidant capacity with about 1,800 ORAC units [Oxygen Radical Absonbance Capacity - a unit of measure developed by the USDA]. Being a cruciferous vegetable, kale provides the phytochemicals sulforane, dithiolethione, and isothiocynate, and the precursors to indole-3-carbinol. It is also a good source of lutein, zeaxanthin, and quercetin and a signicicant source of the phytonutrients calcium, beta-carotene, and ascorbic acid. Fresh kale is most plentiful and least expensive in the winter months. It can be a life saver in meager times because even the the deepest winter, you can still harvest kale form the garden. It also is available frozen and canned in the supermarket. [And Fresh and Organic at Breadroot!]

For Vitamin K think Kale

(From Healthy Women, Healthy Lives, Hankinson et.al, Fireside, 2001, Chapter: Lowering the risk of Osteoporosis, p199)

Found mainly in leafy vegetables, vitamin K plays an important role in maintaining healthy bones. First, it is essential for the production of osteocalcin, one of the main proteins used to build bone. Second, it inhibits the production of substances known to promote the breakdown of bone. Finally, vitamin K helps regulate the amount of calcuim that is excreted in the urine. If too much calcium is excreted and the body does not have enough to perform its normal functions, it will leach the calcium away from the bones. Vitamin K helps prevent this by maintaining adequate levels of calcuim in the blood.

Several studies have shown that low levels of vitamin K lead to low bone mass. In the Nurses' Health Study, we found that such low levels of vitamin K might also lead to hip fractures. Women who got at least 100 micrograms of vitamin K a day were 239 percent less likely to break a hip than those who got less of this vitamin. Notably, vitamin K is easy to obtain through daily diet, with Kale and other greens being the best sources: a half a cup of kale contains about 715 microcgrams. Spinach, broccoli, and lettuce are also excellent sources. There are 215 micrograms of virtamin K in a cup of raw spinach, 150 micrograms in half a cup of broccoli, and 70 micrograms in a cup of lettuce.

Kale Ranks Tops in Nutrients per Calorie

(from Eat to Live, Joel Fuhrman, MD, Little Brown, 2003, p60)

Dr Fuhrman encourages foods to be compared as nutrient per calorie. This table from his book compares the nutritional content of a 100 calorie portion of various foods.

NUTRIENTS PRESENT IN 100-CALORIE PORTIONS OF SELECTED FOODS