Most of you have heard about eating the rainbow. In fact, Time Magazine recommended for a long, healthy life that you make your plate look like a bowl of Crayola crayons. Think red, blue, orange, and green. Recently, however, there has been a superstar vegetable in the white category and that is cauliflower.
Cauliflower is what we call a cruciferous vegetable. Cruciferous vegetables are a diverse group of vegetables with many health benefits, that include brussel sprouts, kale, broccoli, bok choy, and arugula. The word cruciferous is an informal classification for members of the mustard family and comes from the Latin Cruciferae, meaning cross-bearing because of the 4 petals resembling a cross.
There are several reasons to include this white vegetable in your diet:
- It contains many nutrients, such as choline, an important nutrient for brain health, and helps prevent cholesterol from accumulating in the liver. Cauliflower is also rich in vitamin C. It even has more vitamin C than an orange.
- It has an antioxidant called indole-3 Carbinol which has been shown to reduce the risk of breast and reproductive cancers in men and women.
- Rich in sulforaphane which is a powerful antioxidant that helps to neutralize toxins and calm inflammation.
A tip most people don’t know is the Hack-and-Hold method. This provides the most sulforaphane. That is why you want to cut up your cauliflower, wait 40 minutes, then cook it to get as much sulforaphane as possible.
When you cook cauliflower without the Hack-and-Hold method, you end up with less sulforaphane because the enzyme Myronase is destroyed in the cooking process.
There are many ways to include cauliflower in your diet. A few to try are cauliflower rice, cauliflower pizza crust, and creamy garlic mashed cauliflower. And be sure to try the roasted cauliflower with rosemary and parmesan recipe. See the recipe download link below.
Next time you eat – you may want to consider an extra helping of cauliflower!
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Cauliflower-based Recipe
