It Ain't Easy Eating Green – Or Is It?

Kale is touted by many authors of “superfoods” books to be a superfood. Why? Because it is a nutrient dense dark leafy green. Ruth Yaron, author of Super Baby Food emphasized the importance of kale for calcium. In fact, she’s the one that introduced me to this food. (Prior to my learning to feed my kids a healthy diet, my husband and I ate horribly. I had no idea what kale was).

For years I tried to down this slightly bitter and very strong tasting vegetable and sneaked it into many things my children ate. I attempted to make banana and kale smoothies (blech!) and back when we ate cooked vegan food, I made all kinds of yummy pasta dishes with kale in it. The only way it was palatable to me was cooked. Raw kale is gross tasting!

Thankfully, I haven’t felt the need to down kale in awhile. Here’s why. When people zero in on a particular food and extol it’s virtues, very often they forget to consider that there are other factors that contribute to it’s value in the human diet. Kale is very nutrient dense, yes, but how well can the human body digest it?

Nora Lenz from www.rawschool.com says that kale and other cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage and collard greens are:

“disqualified as optimal or even appropriate due to high cellulose content. Our bodies have limited ability to access the nutrients encased in the cellulose structure, so most of what we eat of them must only be eliminated from the body, which unnecessarily taxes our eliminative processes. These vegetables also contain irritating and indigestible oxalic acid and are bland or unpleasant to eat in their raw state. The exception in this category is young or baby spinach, which has what most people describe as a pleasant flavor and is relatively easy to digest in moderate quantities since its oxalic acid content is low at this point in its growth.”

Of course, cooking breaks down some of this cellulose and renders it more digestible to your body. But cooking also destroys many nutrients and changes the structure of the food which is not a good thing. Raw fruits and veggies are going to win nutritionally over cooked, anytime (as long as we are selecting appropriate foods).

But we all know that leafy greens are important for good health. So what is one to eat instead?

I suggest the lettuces. Romaine lettuce is easy to digest. And I know everybody says that there’s no nutritional value in iceberg lettuce, but I beg to differ. Iceberg lettuce is pleasant tasting and very easy on your digestive system. And a food that your body can easily digest is going to provide you with more nutrients and bigger health benefits than a food that – although appearing to be brimming with nutritional value, is not as digestible, which renders most of it’s touted nutrients useless to you.

Celery is another valuable “green” veggie that is of optimal value to the human body.

We haven’t banned kale from our diet, but we no longer try to persuade ourselves to suck it up and like it. So lately my family has been eating lots of romaine, iceberg and celery. I don’t dread eating these foods because they are pleasant and tasty. And they feel good in my tummy!