Do you even kale?
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kshama2001 wrote: »I always find these infographics about a vegetable interesting, because if you did the same thing with just how many fortified vitamins, particularly the B vitamins, are in almost any grain product including Oreos, the reaction wouldn't be the same.
Personally I partially blame Linus Pauling for knowing a lot about physics, but being a quack about vitamin C intake.
Dysfunctional Foods
Like lipstick on a pig: why fortified junk foods can't change junk
One of the disquieting trends in modern nutrition—and frankly, there are quite a few—is the contention that fortification makes any food a good food.
A time-honored example is breakfast cereal. Who hasn't heard a sonorous announcer conclude a television commercial by declaring that some kids' cereal that would otherwise seem a lot like a bowl full of jelly beans is "fortified with 11 essential vitamins and minerals—part of a complete breakfast!"
They tend not to mention that it can be a very dubious part of a complete breakfast. Nor do they tend to specify in what way it's complete.
This was bad enough, but now we have vitamins and minerals added to almost every edible thing, including soda, and even water. The food industry would have us believe this makes the food better for us. I disagree.
What is in play here is the definition of functional food, or functionally enhanced food. Our bodies need essential nutrients; that, of course, is what makes them essential. Our culture seems to have accepted the notion that adding such nutrients to foods always enhances them.
Michael Pollan argued eloquently against this notion in his January 2007 New York Times Magazine story. Nutrient fortification of everything as a basis for implying a food is nutritious is the very epitome of the dangerous trend Pollan referred to as "nutritionism"—the substitution of an unhelpful focus on isolated nutrients in place of the far more constructive focus on wholesome foods and overall nutritional quality.
For my part, I don't think a food that is dysfunctional to begin with can be made functional with the addition of vitamins and minerals. To borrow a metaphor, this is putting lipstick on a pig.
Read more: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2013/04/01/dysfunctional-foods
Except if the lipstick on a big is identical to the lipstick on a human, they're both still lipstick.
The idea that they're a different lipstick relies on a cleanliness thinking about food - that there is some innate wholeness to molecules depending on their source.
Frankly, fortification programs have probably saved quiet a few human lives.
It also starts with an utterly false premise - that foods found in nature (which honestly, nothing we eat really resembles wild forms anyway) has any design to be optimal for human nutrition needs. It can quickly shown as false by one simple nutrient: folic acid. Human fortified folic acid, a synthetic version of folate altered to be more digestable, is better than natural folate for absorption by humans, allowing folic acid fortified foods to prevent neural tube defects in infants associated with folate deficiency.
The way this is known by actually experimenting and testing uptake in live humans and animals. So even if Pollan's point about nutritionism as lacking explanatory power because diet is holistic, he'd still be wrong. He'd still have the burden of proving that foods in a natural state are in anyway better absorbed or better at creating health than the individual ingredients.
And to top it off, if one rejects nutritionism, the idea of using infographics about food is the most assinine thing one can do. You're advertising the nutritionism of the food. If you accept Pollan's premise, you can only advertise "kale is kale", it is great at kale-ifying your kale levels in your kalery intake. You'd have no explanatory power to say the vitamin C, iron, or magnesium in kale is a useful property of kale because you have to accept that kale is only nutrition for being kale.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »I love kale. It's so versatile and easy to grow year round. It's my second favorite green. Collards are my first love.
What do you do about cabbage worms?
In my garden, Swiss chard is the easiest to grow. No pests touch it, not even the woodchucks. I can grow it from April - November.0 -
Thank GOD both kale and oatmeal are not the only foods left on earth!0
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kshama2001 wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »I love kale. It's so versatile and easy to grow year round. It's my second favorite green. Collards are my first love.
What do you do about cabbage worms?
In my garden, Swiss chard is the easiest to grow. No pests touch it, not even the woodchucks.
I pick them off until they get really bad. Then I let the chickens in the garden to eat them, though they will also take their fair share of the greens along with it. LOL The good thing about greens like collards and kale is that chickens or worms can eat them down to the stem and they'll just come right back once the pest is gone. So, yeah, I eat more lettuce, beet greens and chard in the hottest part of summer and wait for the cool weather to bring the collards and kale back.
I cover things like cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower with fabric to keep worms off.0 -
Kale isn't a verb0
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Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Never had it.
I like kohlrabi greens though. Used to throw them out and just eat the bulb and then realized what a waste that was.
It's kind of sad how many greens are wasted. Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, plus so many other vegetables have delicious edible greens that are usually thrown away. In markets in my area you can't even buy beet greens unless they are attached to the beetroot, and those aren't always available.
I've gotten better about trying to use the whole vegetable since starting my own garden. I do know not to eat rhubarb leaves (!) but so many others are edible and yes, wasted.0 -
Nah, kale tastes like dirt a little too "earthy" for my liking0
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carmkizzle wrote: »Nah, kale tastes like dirt a little too "earthy" for my liking
Yes. I feel the same. Some folks I know, who love the kales, say mine is dirty if it tastes that way. Nope, it's not palatable to me. And that's okay. Even spinach tastes "like dirt" to me, but it is a tasty dirt (to me), lol.0 -
I don't love Kale...I discovered that I could turn it into pesto (around 2/3 kale and 1/3 basil then just they usual pesto recipe) and then everyone in the house loves it!
When it shows up in my produce box it is dfp....destined for pesto.
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I like to add the Costco frozen chopped spinach and kale to smoothies, chia pudding and soups. I'm generally not a superfood splurger but it's not expensive. Which is a relative term, but for me it's not. The huge bag lasts months and probably costs less than a typical fast food meal. Frozen greens overall are a great deal, even without buying in bulk.
And incorporating many good greens is better than just always having spinach or romaine or some other single green in your diet.
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I use my dehydrator all the time to make kale chips. Sprinkle them with some nutritional yeast.0
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carmkizzle wrote: »Nah, kale tastes like dirt a little too "earthy" for my liking
+1 and beets.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »I love kale. It's so versatile and easy to grow year round. It's my second favorite green. Collards are my first love.
What do you do about cabbage worms?
In my garden, Swiss chard is the easiest to grow. No pests touch it, not even the woodchucks.
I pick them off until they get really bad. Then I let the chickens in the garden to eat them, though they will also take their fair share of the greens along with it. LOL The good thing about greens like collards and kale is that chickens or worms can eat them down to the stem and they'll just come right back once the pest is gone. So, yeah, I eat more lettuce, beet greens and chard in the hottest part of summer and wait for the cool weather to bring the collards and kale back.
I cover things like cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower with fabric to keep worms off.
Ya, Mom used floating row covers on her kale last year to keep the worms off and said it made the kale more tender, too.0 -
When they say "100g of kale contains x,y,z", are they expecting people eat 100g in one meal/sitting?
Serious question. I ask because I've been looking around doing my best to get in more nutritiously dense foods, and haven't tried kale before and would like to try it, but don't really have an idea of how much to use at any one time?0 -
carmkizzle wrote: »Nah, kale tastes like dirt a little too "earthy" for my liking
+1 and beets.
Have you tried beet greens?!? Clean off the dirt and they taste like dust. Packed full of stuff. What stuff?!? IDK, but it has stuff.
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When they say "100g of kale contains x,y,z", are they expecting people eat 100g in one meal/sitting?
Serious question. I ask because I've been looking around doing my best to get in more nutritiously dense foods, and haven't tried kale before and would like to try it, but don't really have an idea of how much to use at any one time?
100 grams of raw kale would represent a lot of chewing but you could try that as a serving size for steamed kale. Or maybe half that and work up. I probably use 2 ounces (56 g) of kale in kale salad.
I put 43-55 g of greens in my smoothies and would up that amount if I didn't have greens at every meal.0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »When they say "100g of kale contains x,y,z", are they expecting people eat 100g in one meal/sitting?
Serious question. I ask because I've been looking around doing my best to get in more nutritiously dense foods, and haven't tried kale before and would like to try it, but don't really have an idea of how much to use at any one time?
100 grams of raw kale would represent a lot of chewing but you could try that as a serving size for steamed kale. Or maybe half that and work up. I probably use 2 ounces (56 g) of kale in kale salad.
I put 43-55 g of greens in my smoothies and would up that amount if I didn't have greens at every meal.
Thanks for this, @kshama2001!
I'll give 50g a go for a salad.0 -
mean_and_lean wrote: »
I thought she was calling us suckers, not sheep. lol
I worked at a big chain restaurant in the 80s that was touting kale then though mainly as a cheap, pretty garnish that if you did eat, was good for you.0 -
I bought Parmesan Kale Chips because I thought, how bad can they be? They were worse than I could imagine.0
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