Three reasons to eat cabbage regularly
Cabbage is not exactly the sweetest vegetable as it contains a lot of sulphur which gives it that tangy, metallic taste, but it is a powerhouse of essential nutrients needed by the body to function optimally. Including it in a diet regularly, provides the body with numerous nutrients it needs to remain healthy.
One way to reduce the metallic taste in the vegetable is by blanching it, this means immersing it in very hot water for 2 minutes, then removing it. This blanching helps to slightly reduce the amount of sulphur in it, which makes it easier to eat; it also reduces the amount of gas ingested, which helps to reduce farting and bloating after eating cabbage.
There are many reasons to eat cabbage but these three are the most important, they include:
1. It helps to cleanse the liver. The liver is a very important organ in the human body, it has quite a number of functions like producing bile ( a yellow/orange chemical) that is very important in the digestive process. This bile produced by the liver helps to turn fats gotten from food into active energy that the body uses to carry out daily activities.
The liver also purifies/filters the blood that comes from the digestive tract (small and large intestine) by removing all impurities and toxins, then pass it to the rest of the body.
These functions are very important in the body, and if any disease affects the liver, the whole body will be in serious trouble, but constantly eating cabbage (cooked or raw) helps to cleanse the liver of the toxins/impurities gathered from performing its functions, and keeps it in good condition so that it can keep doing its job.
2. It helps to fight and prevent cancer, especially colorectal cancer. From the early days of man, cabbage has been used to fight and prevent a lot of diseases, including cancer.
The compound that gives it that metallic taste known as Sulphoraphane is also the cancer-fighting nutrient. It stops the progression of cancer cells, and kills the cancer cells that have already formed.
To get this cancer-fighting and prevention benefits, it is important that a person eats at least 1-2 handfuls of it everyday for 5 days in a week. It is the regular consumption that ensures that the body remains cancer free.
Also, the dietary fibre contained in it keeps the digestive system healthy. It does this by preventing the growth of dangerous polyps that cause colorectal cancer.
A diet very rich in fibre ensures that the small and large intestine remain clean.
3. Helps to reduce pain/inflammation in the body. This vegetable is one of the best anti-inflammatory foods. From treating headaches, reducing joint pain, treating arthritis to helping to alleviate allergies, cabbage does it all.
It is also used to ease pain in the breast that comes from weaning a baby off breast milk. This is done by wrapping 3 or more leaves (depending on the size of the breast) of the vegetable on each breast, wear a bra to prevent the leaves from falling off and remove after 24 hours or when the leaves wilt/wither. This process should be repeated for 3 days and the pain will disappear naturally without taking medication.
