Kale

Recently kale has been making a name for itself for being one of the healthiest foods.  Kale, also known as boerenkool, is a vegetable that has green or purple colored leaves.  The leaves do not form a head like broccoli, instead the leaf is the part of the plant that you eat.  There are a number of health benefits that kale possesses.  One health benefit to kale is that it is extremely high in fiber, has zero fat and is very low in calories.  One cup of kale has 5 grams of fiber, 36 calories and 3 grams of protein.  The high fiber helps people with their digestion.  Other vegetables do not come close to how antioxidant and vitamin rich kale is.  10 Ways to Try Kale | Mary Crimmins

Another benefit of kale is that it is extremely high in iron.  Per calorie, kale has more iron in it than beef.  Iron helps with transporting oxygen throughout the body, good liver function and cell growth.  Furthermore, kale is high in Vitamin K (which help protect against cancer and strengthen bones), Vitamin A (helps with your vision and vision) and Vitamin C (which is helpful for one’s immune system).  Believe it or not kale has more calcium per calorie than milk does.  Good for cardiovascular support, anti-inflammatory and filled with antioxidants, kale is a great food to that can keep just about all parts of your body healthy.

There are many different kinds of kale which are classified by the type of leaf they have.  There are curly-leaved, plain-leaved, leaf and spear (cross between curly and plain), and cavolo nero.  Kale can grow well in the winter, especially the kind of kale called rape kale or hungry gap.  It is called hungry gap because it is grown during the time of year when other crops normally aren’t grown.  A very tall kind of kale is called Jersey kale or cow cabbage.

Here is a quick video on some cool kale stuff!

 

After seeing the many, many health benefits that kale has to offer, people should consider trying to work some kale into their diet.  There is no need to eat kale everyday but try to work it into a meal 2-4 times a week.  This would be very beneficial one’s help and who knows could even help save lives from protecting against cancer.  One good and easy way to eat kale is to cut it up into chip like sizes, then salt them and bake them in the oven.  I know from experience that they are pretty good since my mom makes them sometimes and I’ve had a couple of the chips.  Another good way to add kale into your diet it to throw it in some fruit and vegetable smoothies to add some other flavors and nutrition in to the mix as well.  Kale being one of the healthiest foods on the planet, I don’t see what people don’t add it to their diet since it is only going to make them healthier and feel better.

 

Sources

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4408/Top-10-Health-Benefits-of-Eating-Kale.html

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270435.php?page=2

http://www.livestrong.com/article/169384-benefits-of-juicing-kale/

2 thoughts on “Kale

  1. Kateryna Onysko

    Hey, I found your article very informative and have learnt a lot about kale and will surely consider adding it to my diet. But reading your article I realized it lacked something. I didn’t know the reason you were informing me about all the benefits regarding kale and would suggest that a thesis statement or a guiding statement in the beginning would greatly benefit you article. Something along the lines of, “Recently kale has been making a name for itself for being one of the healthiest foods. Here are some facts and information that could convince you to add it to your diet” Or maybe a different title like “Benefits of Kale in our diet” That way your readers would get a sense of what your article is going to be about from the beginning and know what they are going to be reading. But still, your article was fun to read  Thanks for the fun read

  2. pxw5127

    Kale has always fascinated me, and I don’t know why. I’ve always known that it is super healthy, but it just seems weird. One of my aunts is really into health food, and we always joke about kale with her because it seems to be very popular within the healthy community. Over Thanksgiving I tried Kale chips which were surprisingly not bad. It did get stuck in every single tooth though. One of the things that I found most interesting from your post was that kale has more iron than beef. My parents always tell me to eat my meat because I need iron, but maybe now I’ll just eat kale. It also has more calcium than milk! That is insane! I think that one of the most important properties that kale has is its ability to grow in the winter. When most fruits and vegetables are done growing, kale keeps going. After reading more about kale, I found that it can actually be bad. A woman was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and found that kale was the one of the number one foods that caused this, which she ate every morning. I don’t know what to believe. I think that since hypothyroidism is most common in older women, it would be most beneficial to eat kale at a younger age. Thanks for sharing this information about the mysterious kale!

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