I dunno, we eat a lot of broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower. Even if kale has a higher concentration of the nutrients those have, my guess is that i benefit more nutritionally from eating different vegetables, like spinach and chard. But mostly i prefer spinach and chard because they taste so much better. I really dislike kale. It’s bitter and tough, unless you cook the hell out of it. And if you are going to cook the hell out of your leaves, collards are tastier.
Even in the US. It was staple in both African and German American food cultures.
To me the key point is why many tasty nutritious foods were poo too’d by white middle and upper class Americans as peasant food? This predates even the ‘50s push to processed food. When did it start? Was it an urban rural divide originally?
Kale no different than the pushback from Wonder Bread and wanting something dark green other than spinach.
YMMV. I prefer the taste of kale, and eat it both raw and cooked. Of course, I’m growing it myself, so I can pick it small (Tuscan/Dinosaur/Lacinato variety, not the curly stuff).
FWIW, my college dining hall garnished with escarole, not curly kale.
Yeah, it’s clearly a matter of taste. And I’m not really a huge fan of vegetables, so i tend to be picky about them.
I wish it’d go back to being a garnish. My wife swallowed the “superfood” label hook, line, and sinker, so now kale is a key ingredient in her smoothies. I’ll cook kale, no problem, but her smoothies have a fishy taste to me, and the only ingredient that I can identify as the culprit is the kale. I know it doesn’t make sense, but her smoothies are made with pineapple juice, frozen strawberries, Greek yogurt, and kale. She knows I’m not a fan, but she persists because superfood.
A long time ago – Shakespeare depicts an English aristocrat talking dismissively about “cheese and garlic,” with the implication that these are poor-people foods, and characters in Victorian fiction are still occasionally snobbish about cheese three centuries later. Presumably French people didn’t feel that way!
While it’s true that there are a variety of other plants with numbers near kale, it is the leafy green with the most and most is easy to remember.
A light proof of that is to note that quite a few of the vitamins, in plants, are involved in either utilizing sun energy or preventing/fighting sun damage. Quite a few nutrients are also pigments, helping to make the plants darker, or at least appear in plants that are darker because those are plants adapted to high light intensity environments.
If you’re looking at leafy greens - as I understand it - you can basically determine how nutrient dense they are, relative to one another, just by checking how dark they are.
Of course, that also means that, when we say “kale”, we’re talking about the more common varieties like dinosaur kale and curly kale. A light green Portuguese kale might not any better than a darker cabbage.
But that points to the amazing thing about kale: I only need to remember the one word “kale” and I can find the most nutritious leafy green. Maybe chard and brussel sprouts come close - I don’t know - but if I just buy kale then I’m definitely doing alright.
And that’s what people did. For me, I’ve remembered the one factoid that “dark = nutritious”, so I’d likely grab a kale over a lettuce but I might also think that a dark broccoli might be a strong (and delicious) contender and choose that instead. Maybe I’d be right, maybe I wouldn’t be. Probably the “dark” rule is better than the “kale” rule, but it is a simplification and a shortcut.
When you’re just remembering “that one rule”, it makes it quicker to shop and hopefully keeps you in the right zone. But it’s probably true that a more complete analysis would provide better results and be better for society than using rules of thumb.
But it’s still a little random. Collards are at least as much “poor Black people food" as kale, but only kale was propelled into the limelight. Or maybe that’s because kale has less cultural baggage.
I’m sensitive cruciferous veggies. I swear there’s still some cauliflower I ate last year somewhere lost in my gut.
But kale doesn’t upset the tummy. I have it nearly everyday. I need nutrient loaded food and more calories. Kale doesn’t change my glucose levels.
It’s easy peasey to grow. It’s a bitch to wash. Anything you can put a green veg in you can sub Kale in.
Love it.
Make your own smoothies? You can drink yours, she can drink hers, everybody could be happy.
Some of the lettuces I grow are darker than the kale.
– Kale has better flavor if it’s harvested in cold weather. If you’re shopping at the grocery store, however, this isn’t going to be information that’s provided.
Some varieties are less curly than others.
– My brother-in-law loves kale. I’m not wild about it, though I will (and do) eat some..
Yeah, if I didn’t like vegetables, kale isn’t what I’d snack on.
ETA:
You remind me of the yummy Portuguese/Galician caldo verdes with kale.
If you add about a tablespoon of bottled lemon juice it cuts the fishy(?) odor some say is in kale smoothies.
Baby kale works better for smoothies and salads. In my experience. I like the adult version, most.
That’s weird, as kale is just another member of the cabbage family. But i guess if it tastes different it must have some different stuff in it.
While “darker = more nutritious” is a pretty good general rule of thumb, cauliflower and cabbage are still very nutrient-dense despite being white.
Yes. Kale is my last resort.
Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli all bother me.
I think maybe it’s the tummy bubbles some create with my own personal chemistry, down there.
I, too, find kale far more pleasant than collards, though I’ll eat any green. I find you don’t need to cook kale anywhere near as much as collards. Hell, it’s fine raw which I won’t do with collard greens.
I could have sworn kale was like late 90s, but early-mid 2000s does make somewhat more sense. And that Portuguese kale soup everyone is mentioning is to die for.
I never cook kale, it’s terrible that way. Cooking, especially the “hell out of” variety, also destroys nutrients so badly there’s no point in eating what comes out of it. (I do cook cauliflower, asparagus etc., but very lightly). I eat kale straight off the plant. It really boosts my day!
Yep. If you cook the hell of it it defeats the whole purpose.
It’s common to cook greens too long. I would’ve thought some ol’Mother long ago would’ve realized it wasn’t needed to make them palatable.
On the other hand maybe it was the pot liquor they were after. You know that green liquid that is so good with cornbread? It was full of those leeched nutrients.
Not if you are making soup.
Yes, in my opinion. No point. Taking something that is quite spendy and brimming with micronutrients and making it substantially less so. YMMV.