"The Benefits of Kale and Cabbage for Cholesterol"
LDL “bad” cholesterol is bad,
but oxidized LDL may be worse.
What role might our diet play?
Increased fruit and vegetable consumption
has been reported to reduce the risk
of developing cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and strokes.
Well, maybe it’s in part because of all
the antioxidants in healthy plant foods
preventing the oxidation of LDL cholesterol.
And, indeed, the LDL oxidation resistance
was found to be greatest among those
eating more plant-based.
So, that would be in addition to the
decreased blood pressure and lower LDL overall
in terms of beneficial effects.
But, you don’t know if it’s cause-and-effect...
until you put it to the test.
Put people on a whole food plant-based diet for just 3 weeks,
and rates and extent of LDL oxidation drop.
The effects of kale on LDL oxidation
were put to the test.
Kale is a best-of-all-worlds food,
low in calories and packed to the hilt
with nutrition—vitamins, minerals, anti-inflammatory compounds,
antioxidant phytonutrients, you name it.
No surprise, then, given its high antioxidant capacity,
kale showed a protective effect on the oxidation of LDL
even at low concentrations.
But, this was in vitro, in a test tube.
Kale was also put to the test in mice,
but what about people?
I did a video on this study, on how kale juice improves
coronary artery disease risk factors
in men with high cholesterol.
Extraordinary results, a 20% drop in LDL
among the nonsmokers;
but they were drinking the equivalent of about 10 cups of kale a day.
Still, the fact that they were able
to see such an improvement, even though
nearly all the fiber was removed,
because it was just juice,
shows there does seem to be something special in the plant.
But, can you get the benefit just eating the stuff?
Let’s find out.
The effect of black and red cabbage on oxidized LDL,
and by black cabbage, they mean lacinato kale,
also known as dinosaur or Tuscan kale.
They had people eat a bag of frozen kale
and cabbage a day for just 2 weeks,
which is great because you just keep it
in the freezer, prewashed, pre-chopped—
just throw it in any meal you are making—
and got significant reductions of
total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol,
and even blood sugar levels,
and the antioxidant capacity of their blood went up;
so, no surprise they demonstrated
a significant decrease in oxidized LDL too.
Would it have been better to take that red cabbage
and ferment it into sauerkraut?
Red or purple cabbage is one of my favorite vegetables,
packed with antioxidants, yet dirt cheap
and seems to last forever in the fridge,
and it’s pretty, and juicy, and tasty—
I try to slice shreds off into any meal I’m making.
But, when you ferment it,
not only do you add way too much salt,
but you end up wiping out some of the nutrition.
Here’s the big spike in antioxidant capacity
of your bloodstream in the hours
after eating fresh red cabbage,
cut down by almost 30% if you ate the same amount
in fermented form.
Does cabbage have to be raw though?
No, some cooking techniques may improve
the antioxidant activity in kale and red cabbage.
The effects of the cooking process can be positive,
since cooking softens the vegetable tissues,
helping your body extract the active compounds.
However, cooking can also be negative,
because heat treatment can degrade some of the compounds.
They looked at a variety of different cooking methods
and concluded steaming may be
considered to be the best home cooking technique
to prepare kale and red cabbage.
But with foods that healthy,
the truly best way to prepare them
is whatever way will get you
to eat the most of them.