Crouching Garnish, Hidden SuperFood: The Secret Life of Kale

Sayer Ji, Contributor
Activist Post

Could kale, a less domesticated, disheveled form of cabbage, really be one of the most potent healing foods in existence today?

Few foods commonly available at the produce stand are as beneficial to your health as kale. And yet, sadly, it is more commonly found dressing up something not as healthy in a display case as a decoration than on someone's plate where it belongs.

Kale is actually a form of cabbage that evaded domestication, sharing many of the same traits as wilder plant relatives unafraid of holding on to their bitter principle, and relatively unruly appearance.

Kale is perfectly content letting its luscious green leafy hair down, being the 'hippie' member of a family that includes the more tightly wound broccoli, cauliflower and the Brussel sprout, whose greater respectability as far as most restaurant menus go means kale is more likely to be found forgotten, shriveling up somewhere on the bottom shelf of someone's refrigerator, no doubt possessed by someone with every intention (but not the time and appetite enough) to eat it.

But please do not underestimate this formidable plant, which grows as high as six to seven feet in the right conditions, casting a shadow as long as the impressive list of beneficial nutritional components it contains. Its nutritional density, in fact, is virtually unparalleled among green leafy vegetables.

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