Why Kale Is the Koolest Vegetable

By Abby Phon

It's no secret. I love kale. I have received phone calls, emails, texts and messages from friends and family saying that they just cooked kale for the first time and thought of me; last week a friend called from the grocery store, just because she saw kale and was reminded of me. This is probably a good indication of how I feel about kale.

During the winter months when other leafy greens are out of season, kale is in full bloom, in season, and richest in flavor. This leafy green, cruciferous vegetable is versatile to cook with and can be prepared just like spinach or any other greens. 

As one of the most nutritionally dense foods, Kale scores a perfect 1,000 on the Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (just like the giant banners say at Whole Foods Market). The ANDI score is a food rating system that measures nutrients per calorie. One cup of kale has only 36 calories but it’s chock full of Vitamins K (1328% RDA), A (192%), C (90%), and E (6%). Kale also has calcium (9%), iron (6%), manganese, copper, calcium, fiber (10%), vitamin B6, potassium, iron, phytochemicals and even Omega 3 Fatty Acids (10%). 

Here’s what Kale's nutrients do for YOU!:

Fiber: Kale keeps you fuller longer. That will help keep your snacking and over eating at bay, which keeps your weight down (so kale helps you stay fit and trim!). Diets high in fiber-rich leafy greens, like kale, show decreased risks of cancers (such as colon, breast, prostate, ovarian, bladder and lung), as well as heart disease and osteoporosis.

Phytochemicals: Kale lowers the risk of cataract and macular degeneration because it’s an excellent source of phytochemicals (lutein and zeaxanthin). For optimal eye health, the daily suggested dose of lutein and zeaxanthin is 6 to 15 milligrams. One half cup of cooked kale meets the recommended daily dose of these 2 phytochemicals. Along with lutein and zeaxanthin, Kale also has 45 other flavonoids—powerful antioxidants—linked to the protection against cancer.

Vitamin A: An effective antioxidant, it boosts immunity and maintains healthy bones and teeth.

Vitamin K: Necessary to produce osteocalcin, a protein that strengthens the composition of our bones. Studies show that women with diets low in Vitamin K have significantly lower bone density. Vitamin K also prevents calcium build-up in our tissue that can lead to cardiovascular disease and stroke and is a key nutrient that regulates inflammation in the body. 

Vitamin E: Acts as an antioxidant in brain cells, protecting them from free radicals. This will help keep your mind sharp!

Kale Preparation:

Kale is not fussy. It doesn’t require much prep at all so it’s a really great food friend to have, especially if you’re a busy person on the go (and let’s face it, who isn’t!?). As with all veggies (and especially dark green leafy ones), make sure you wash each leaf in cold water thoroughly.  While they are dripping dry, cut out the big stem in the middle. Or what I do is grab hold of the bottom stem and pull, tearing that stalk out! Viola! Your kale is ready to go! Here are some things to do with it, once you’ve got it in your hands.

Kale Salad: If you’re a raw food purist or just in a warm climate and want something fresh, chop kale finely (amount is up to you!) .  I recommend this lemon/tahini dressing: olive oil,  a spoonful of tahini paste and fresh lemon juice; pour over the finely chopped green leaves and let sit for 15 to 20 minutes. The dressing will ‘marinade’ the leaves, softening them and soaking up the sunny goodness. Top with whatever veggies you like! Some of my favorites are yellow peppers, shaved fennel, avocado, pomegranate seeds and sliced cucumbers!  

Sautéing/Braising: My favorite way to make kale is to sauté it with garlic and coconut oil (great as a side dish or as part of a main dish!). I use 2-3 cloves of garlic and about 1 tbsp coconut oil to one big bunch of kale.  Gently heat the garlic then add the washed and chopped kale to your frying pan.  You want to cook it over a medium-low heat until the leaves soften and wilt. How long you sauté is a personal preference, but I like my kale to keep some of its bright vibrant green color and health benefits so I don’t cook it for more than five minutes (remember, even if you turn off the heat, food keeps cooking!). If you want to go without oil, try braising: simmer in three-quarters of a cup of veggie broth for 20 minutes to soften up the leaves , drain and serve.

Steaming: Cover with a little water and cook until soft. Super healthy.

Kale Chips: I made this for a holiday party. I put out an entire bowl, made someone a cocktail, turned around and the bowl was empty! It is a great alternative for grownups, in place of potato chips. Kids love it too! And it’s super easy. Make sure your kale pieces are thoroughly dried (otherwise you’ll wind up with steamed kale instead!). Toss with olive oil, put in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes. Flip the leaves halfway through. (And check them often; you don’t want the leaves to turn brown because they will become bitter.) When the leaves are crispy, sprinkle with sea salt and invite me over. J  

Also: I add chopped kale to soups, stews, grains (like millet and quinoa), mashed potatoes and pasta (about a cup but the amount is up to you!). Last year when I was on vacation in the Caribbean, I had the chef add it to my omelet (delish!) and at home on the weekends I often use it as a bed for poached eggs or toss it in a smoothie.

Some tips:

• Avoid washing kale until just before use, since it will hasten spoilage.
• Kale will shrink during cooking, like spinach does but not as drastically.
• As with any fruit or vegetable, it’s best to buy kale in season. A light frost sweetens kale, so here in NYC, fall or winter is the perfect time to enjoy it.
• Fresh kale should have a bright green color.  Avoid kale with yellow or brown leaves—that means it’s getting old.

Varieties of kale:

• Green kale – the most common variety in the grocery store, has a firm texture and curly leaves.
• Red kale – similar in taste and texture to green kale, but adds a splash of red or purple to your plate. 
• Dinosaur kale (also called Tuscan or Lacinato) –  the leaves are flatter and more tender than the other types.
• Ornamental kale – tougher than other kinds, and available in green, purple, pink and white.  Often sold as decoration for a garden or window box, it’s still edible and makes a great garnish. (I’ve been caught eating the “garnish” off of platters at family functions! They make fun of me but I’m the one feeling awesome the next day!) 

Have fun with kale. Eating more of this good green stuff will make you feel better, more vibrant and have increased energy. Now you have no reason, not to eat your greens!

Muscle Up to Lose Bodyfat

Muscle Up to Lose Bodyfat
Dr Michael Colgan 15 March 2013
 
Kristy came to my gym after spending a couple of years jogging with a local group, unsuccessfully trying to lose 15 pounds of stubborn fat off belly and butt. Her diet was very good; decent protein shakes, meat, fish, fresh veges and fruit, good multi-vitamins/minerals, very little grains or dairy, low-glycemic, alkaline, anti-inflammatory. She had read all our books. So the best I could give her was a resistance program, telling her she had to muscle up in order to slim down.
She wasn’t convinced. saying, “I don’t want muscle; where’s my cardio?” I told her if she wanted cardio as well she should take the dog for a walk, not waste her money paying me to jog uselessly on my treadmills. (Depending a bit on body type, %bodyfat, age and effort, it takes 12-15 hours of treadmill jogging to remove one pound of fat.)
If you are trying to lose bodyfat, resistance exercise offers a huge advantage over aerobic exercise, such as jogging, even if you run 10-milers. Resistance exercise builds muscle. Aerobic exercise does not.
Just having more muscle increases your metabolic rate 24 hours a day, whether you are exercising or not. In science it’s called Resting Energy Expenditure.(1) Your body uses more of its energy during the 4.7 hours per day that the average American watches TV, than during the hour or so you might spend at the gym.
How does it happen? Muscle and bone (and all other tissues) are constantly in a state of breakdown and renewal, replacing billions of cells every day. Removing each worn-out cell and replacing it with a new cell takes energy – lots of energy. Every year you replace about 15% of your entire body. The more muscle you have, the more you have to replace, and the more energy you use day and night, whether you move or not.(1)
An average female athlete who comes to the Colgan Institute has about 33 kg of muscle. Just to maintain itself, that muscle alone uses about 15 calories per kilogram per day, 495 calories every day without moving at all.(3) That’s twice the calories used in a one-hour jog.
We measured Kristy’s fat loss and muscle gain every month or so. She worked hard. In a year of three to four one-hour workouts per week she put on 3.4 kg (7.5 lbs) of new muscle, a much higher than average muscle gain. She also lost 6 kg (13.2 lbs) of fat, dropping to a lean 13% bodyfat.
Does not sound a lot does it? But I have been doing exercise science for more than 50 years, and can tell you that most of the huge fat losses you see reported in the media are totally false. Sure, anyone can starve and dehydrate themselves for a few weeks and get big changes on the scale. But they are always temporary and unhealthy. We are in the health business, so the changes we get are at the pace the body replaces itself. It’s the only way that’s both healthy and permanent.
In terms of calories used per day, Kristy’s 3.4 kg of new muscle gives her a lean body insurance policy. Without moving it, the new muscle requires just over 52 calories every day just to do its basic maintenance. That’s 365 calories each week, 19,000 calories every year.
That extra Resting Energy Expenditure effortlessly prevents a fat gain of 2.2 kg (approximately 5 lbs) every year. In ten years it will prevent a fat gain of 22 kg (48.4 lbs). Over the same 10 years, a girl of the same metabolic type as Kristy, who jogs for the same amount of exercise time will lose considerable muscle. The jogger’s Resting Energy Expenditure will fall, leaving her prey to the fat gain that’s always hiding around the corner just waiting for the chance to plump your pillows. Do the right resistance exercise and dodge the Plumper for life.

1. Wolfe RR. The underappreciated role of muscle in health and disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006 Sep;84(3):475-82.

It’s Not Too Late To Save Your Brain

 I realize this is not really about weight loss, but it is a very good read!!

It’s Not Too Late To Save Your Brain

Dr Michael Colgan 13 March 2013

It’s beyond sad to see one of your friends for more than 30 years, a colleague, a brilliant scientist, and a proud and beautiful wife and mother, slowly turn into a shell. Watching her lose her memory was a sight more awful than the foulest cancer. It was wretched hearing the stifled sobs, seeing the tears in her eyes as she realized she had to use her cell phone photos just to remember people, and eventually to remember who she was herself.

Now she no longer remembers how to use a cell phone, and does not know me at all, nor her husband, nor her two children. All the memories, all the years, all the joys of her life and family, are lost to her forever.

She does nothing any more. She watches TV blankly, and cannot even understand the news. Her pealing laughter that would illuminate a room is gone. Her erstwhile smiling mouth is ever set in anguish. The once proud stature bent and trembling, the blazing flame of hair now dank and grey. Despite all the drugs, Alzheimer’s has taken her brain in its deadly grip, a grip that never lets go.

She brought great jewels of laughter,
A million flecks of gold,
And flashing smiles of diamonds,
So dazzling to behold.

But now the house is dismal,
And the wind is heard to grieve,
Where is that lovely lady?
Why did she have to leave?

Don’t let it happen to you. Though I may never have met you, I know exactly where you live. You live in your brain, a mobile house. You can take your brain house anywhere on Earth. But you can never sell it, you can never exchange it, you can never leave it lifelong. So it makes good sense to look after your brain, to nurture and maintain it every day. Yet most people take their brain for granted, and give it less care than they give their teeth.

It may convince you to give your brain more care if you know a few salient facts about memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s has escalated in the US to become the 6th leading cause of death. There is no cure, nor any effective treatment.

In 2011, Barack Obama passed the National Alzheimer’s Protection Act, giving $100 million a year in research grants to find an effective treatment by 2025. Also in 2011, the National Institutes of Health acknowledged that current drugs are ineffective, and changed their long-standing criteria for Alzheimer’s to a focus on prevention. They published voluminous evidence that memory loss, the salient identifying feature of Alzheimer’s, begins to occur in the average American at about age 35.

“Converging evidence from both genetic at-risk cohorts
and clinically normal older individuals suggests that the
pathophysiological process of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
begins years, if not decades, before the diagnosis of clinical
dementia.” (NIH, 19 April 2011)

The National Institutes of Health also reported that half of all Americans over age 50 will suffer memory loss. Once memory loss progresses to forgetting pots on the stove, the sufferer can no longer live independently, and progresses quickly to total helplessness and 24-hour nursing care, until death.

Since 2011, with modern neuroimaging and cerebrospinal fluid analysis, over 100 controlled studies published in 2012 and 2013, have confirmed the pathological processes that begin in apparently normal people at age 35. Prominent among these is a loss of formation of new neurons (neurogenesis) the normal process that replaces worn-out neurons in the hippocampus, the brain area that is crucial for forming new memories. This loss in one of the earliest events that precipitates a cascade of degeneration in the progression to Alzheimer’s, and very likely the first thing we have to prevent.

The good news is that recent controlled studies also show three interventions that can prevent loss of neurogenesis.

1. Optimum brain nutrition
2. Computerized brain exercises
3. Daily physical exercise with both aerobic and resistance components.

If you can read, understand, and remember this article, it is not too late.
Visit www.stopmemorylossnow.com for more information on how to Save Your Brain.

Garbage Protein Is Trying to Get Yuh

Garbage Protein Is Trying to Get Yuh
Michael Colgan Ph D 6 March 2013

From a blade of grass to the tallest tree, from fleas and frogs, to you and me, all living things are built from instructions written in the universal language of DNA. All are built from proteins made to DNA codes expressed by our genes. And most of the DNA is very similar. 80% of our genes are identical to the genes of a banana, 84% to the genes of a cockroach.

More than half the dry weight of a lean human is proteins. They form the structural framework and operating machinery of all tissues; brain, muscles, organs – the lot. All our thoughts are controlled by enzymes, and all enzymes are proteins. The protein collagen forms the essential structure of skin, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage. The protein hemoglobin is the machine that transports our oxygen. Thousands of different proteins control every nerve and every muscle contraction.

All our hormones are proteins. They form an interconnected information system far more complex that the best computers. All our growth factors are proteins, essential for the body to grow and repair itself. All the soldiers of our immune system are proteins. Proteins are our beams and rafters, architects and engineers, movers and shakers, growers and defenders. And all are made from the proteins that we eat, far and away our most important and most complex nutrients.

The molecular study of genes, (called genomics) got going about 2001, as work on translating the human genome neared completion. For a princely sum you can now get a profile of your own individual genome. Doesn’t mean much. Just when we thought we had hit the mother lode for understanding the basic processes of human life, scientists realized that the study of the proteins encoded by genes,(called proteomics) is much more important.(1)

Dr Hanno Steen, Director of the Proteomics Center at Children's Hospital, Boston sums it up. “To really understand biological processes, we need to understand how proteins function in and around cells since they are the functioning units.”

Proteomics is a lot more difficult than genomics. The human genome is more or less constant. Depending on whose figures you take, it contains between 20 and 40 thousand genes. But these genes can code for 10 to 20 times as many proteins. Some single genes alone can code for over 1,000 different proteins. The Human Proteome Project has recently done a fair count of the proteins in the human body: more than 350,000 different ones.(1,2)

In any protein, amino acids are linked to form long coded chains. The longest is titin, a protein that enables muscles to contract properly. Titin has a chain of 34,500 amino acids. Your body and mine has to make titin exactly every day. Consider how important it is for athletes (and the rest of us) to provide exactly the right raw materials from food proteins, so that the body can make titin precisely to code.

It’s doubtful our politicians understand any of this science, because it has never influenced the food supply to provide us better health. Most of the American food chain today results from the huge profit-driven historical error of agribusiness in the 1950s, that has now destroyed most of the land with NPK fertilizers and pesticides. Through its introduction of toxins and the progressive destruction of nutrients in the soils, crops and livestock, US agribusiness is directly responsible for most of the obesity, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s epidemics now undermining the American dream.(3) Eat their garbage proteins and you will grow a garbage body. No way to avoid it.

If you value the structure of your brain, your organs, your skin, your muscles, your looks, and the rate at which you age, never eat junkfood protein again. That’s all the burgers, hot dogs, battery chicken, turkey, pork, beef, tofu, or whatever.(3) If we were not so brainwashed by false advertising and lobby-driven government humbug, we would vote en masse with our pocketbooks and drive them all out of business.

1. Blackstock WP, Weir MP (1999). "Proteomics: quantitative and physical mapping of cellular proteins". Trends Biotechnol. 17 (3): 121–7.
2. Nature Methods, Editorial. The call of the human proteome Nature Methods, 2010;7,661 doi:10.1038/nmeth0910-661.
3. Salatin J. Folks This Ain’t Normal, New York: Center Street Publishers, 2011.