Ciao -
You are currently reading a newsletter about why you should quite literally massage your greens. Probably didn’t see that coming!
Health and fitness 101 - anything green is in your favor (green = chlorophyll) but many of us can have a hard time digesting big salads or meals loaded with raw hardy leafy greens, not exactly encouraging us to eat it. As mentioned in a previous post,
often times a root cause of digestion issues and food sensitivities come from low stomach acid, such as the difficulty to digest leafy greens high in fiber. Massaging your greens can help tremendously!
Some of the most common leafy greens are kale, collard greens, spinach, cabbage, romaine lettuce, and arugula, to name a few. There are also small leafy greens like thyme, cilantro, parsley, and mint. All of these powerhouse nutrition greens are fabulously loaded with essential nutrients, photo-chemicals, minerals, and antioxidants, not to mention taste delicious.
Kale is on the top of the list for being one of the most nutrient dense plant superfoods on the planet. A single cup of kale is more than 200% of the daily serving of vitamin A, 650% of Vitamin K, 134% of vitamin C - honorable mentions including vitamin B6, potassium, copper, calcium, magnesium, and the list goes on. Kale also contains powerful inflammation and oxidative stress fighting antioxidants that have been shown to lower risk of heart disease, cancer, and premature aging, specifically sourced from a compound called sulforaphane (a post on that later). Kales’ only notorious flaw is that of being high in fiber, which isn’t inherently bad, and actually a crucial part of our diet - but can be hard to digest in large quantities. That’s where massaging your greens comes into play.
Massaging your greens is a game changer in breaking down and softening the stubborn cell structures and fibers in leafy greens that can cause grief in the digestive system. Better digestion means better absorption of nutrients! It also makes the greens easier to chew, can reduce bitterness, and allows for so much flavor and variety to be incorporated into your meals.
You can prepare your greens to be massaged by using for example, a salad dressing, some oil, and lemon or lime juice. Lemon juice is my personal favorite. Then, get messy. Stick your hands in there and give the greens a few good tears and some squeezes to soften everything up. Kale especially needs softened up - remove the large green stems and just eat the leaves, massaging them by tearing or by rubbing the leaves between your fingers until they just start to wilt. Maybe this can be a new stress relieving exercise? Throw a couple punches to your greens while you’re at it.
If leafy greens don’t bother your stomach and your digestion (impressive), still massaging your greens isn’t a bad idea, because the softened cell walls increases the bodies ability and effectiveness of the absorption of those vital nutrients offered that our bodies thrive on.
Hopefully this trick creates a new inspiration to invite more superfood leafy greens into your diet, because food is powerful, and food is medicine.
Food for Thought,
Lai