Kale – The Superfood

Lately I have been hearing so much about the superfood, kale!  Everyone is raving about it!  The amazing benefits, the different ways to use it in your meals, and how we can get more of it in our diet.  To be honest, I just started eating kale, as I was a bit weary about it before.  But then my wonderful friend, Whitney, suggested I throw it in a smoothie and I was hooked.

Part of the cabbage family, kale is a dark green, leafy vegetable with similar disease-fighting characteristics as broccoli and Brussels sprouts.  And fights disease, it does! Kale has the highest antioxidant rating based on the ORAC Scale (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) with a value of 1770.  This nutritional powerhouse comes in way ahead of spinach, which has an ORAC value of 1260.

Dietary Supplements & Vitamins

Expensive Pee.  That’s what my professors call dietary supplements.  And expensive they are.  No wonder the supplement/vitamin business makes about 7 billion, yes, BILLION, dollars a year!  And it’s only growing.  But do dietary supplements really do what they claim on the bottle?  How do we know that we are taking what is specified on the label when the formulas are not regulated by the FDA?  This is a very controversial topic and one in which people feel very strongly about.  You are either a supporter of dietary supplements and will spend the outrageous amounts of money to fuel the habit (or even possible placebo effect) or you don’t take them and disregard the hype.  I would like to share what I know - some knowledge that I have learned in school and my personal beliefs on those little pills.