Kale is popular green leafy vegetable that known for its healthy benefitting properties that provide fibre, nutrients, vitamins and minerals that help boost metabolism and help eliminate fat from the body, enhancing the chances of maintaining a healthy body weight.
People nowadays have been largely incorporating their daily intake of greens in the form of kale as its green velvet like leaves are healthier, easy to digest and also provide a crunchy texture that enhances the entire experience of a healthy salad bowl. They also have a subtle taste and flavour to it makes it even more customizable and workable in different settings of dressings and other food combinations.
In terms of its nutritional supremacy, unlike ither leavy vegetable kale does not lose its nutritional value to blanching and also provides with more iron and fibre content than normal leavy vegetables. Kale also comparatively is more digestible than some other similar options and it also does gets easily digested by the body without any bloating caused.
Because of its abundance of antioxidants, kale helps the body fight oxidative stress. In addition to vitamin K's positive effects on bone health, its fibre content promotes digestive health.
Nutritional value of Kale
Kale being a part of green leavy vegetables is already a nutrient dense option for all the health freaks out their but being from a cruciferous family, it does include a lot more nutrients present in any other leafy vegetable. And so, down below is the snippets of what all nutrients to kale provide,
1. Vitamins:
- Being a leafy vegetable kale is good source of vitamin B that is thiamine, carotenoids and niacin. Not only they help in the synthesis of digestive hormones but also help in maintaining skin health as well.
- They also constitute a good amount of vitamin A that is crucial for the betterment of our liver and for visual impairment problems
- In respect to protect our immunity and fight infections, kale also provide a good source of vitamin c to our body and help boost immunity and provide antioxidants.
2. Mineral:
- Kale is also a great source of iron that help improve the blood flow in our body and also target the production of haemoglobin. When consumed with a vitamin c sources or in the raw form, kale helps increase the absorption of iron in the body.
- Along with iron kale also provides with a good amount of magnesium in the body as they are required by the bones in our body. Magnesium helps to prepare the base for a healthy bone and kale helps to replenish it loss in the body.
3. Fiber content:
- Being a green leafy vegetable, kale in no surprise does provide a good amount of fibre, that to dietary fibre to the body that would provide nutrition to the gut bacteria, promote their growth and enhance the digestive system.
4. Antioxidants:
- Packed with antioxidants like carotenoids that include lutein and zeaxanthin that help maintain the eye health and deal with all age-related issues and reduce any muscular damage in the body.
- Also, kale do promote the health of our bones and muscles by providing flavonoid antioxidant that help with immunity and other digestive issues.
5. Protein Content:
- While not a lot of green vegetables provide enough protein, kale is one of the few green vegetables that help provide a decent amount of plant protein to our body.
Potential Health Risks and Side Effects of Kale
1. Oxalates and Kidney Stones: Unlike any other green vegetable kale as well has a naturally occurring compound called oxalate that when consumed together with calcium rich food items may crystalize and form minor kidney stones in the body. Although experts recommend people with these uric acid and kidney issues to not consume any form of green vegetable in the diet.
2. Thyroid issues: Being from a cruciferous family, kale is known to have goitrogenic compounds that hinder with the functions of thyroid hormone and cause difficulty to people who suffer from thyroid problems or who are iodine deficit. Although experts recommend people with these iodine and thyroid issues to consume any form of green vegetable in cooked forms and not in salads as a raw food.
3. Food-Drug Interaction: People that are on anticoagulant medications or any forms of blood thinning medicines are advised not to include any green vegetables in their diet, as they contain good amount of vitamin k in them interfere with the drug absorption in the body and might cause further problems in blood clotting and may lead to internal bleeding as well.
4. Allergic Reactions: Although green vegetable that to kale allergy is quite uncommon and does not really happen but people who have sensitive taste buds might grasp an allergic reaction to certain bacteria's present at the surface of the leaf when not cleaned and washed properly. That is why people are recommended to thoroughly wash any type of green vegetable before consuming it.
5. Fluctuates Blood Sugar: While most vegetables have less carbohydrate amounts in them, but kale comparatively has a bit higher content of carbs that gets increased when consumed in bigger batches as a salad. People with diabetes should be mindful of the amount used in preparing a kale dish and also incorporate other protein and healthy fat sources to balance and minimise the effect.