Living Juice Ingredient Spotlight: Kale!

In this week's Living Juice Ingredient Spotlight, we're talking all things kale! The recently popular "leaf cabbage" is prominent in Living Juice's organic cold-pressed Green Vitality and Pineapple Punch. Both owe much of their nutritional value to kale. Our Green Vitality is prepared with two different varieties of kale - lacinato kale and curly kale. Curly kale is recognizable by its ruffled leaves and fibrous stalk. It is typically deep green in color. Lacinato kale, also commonly known as dinosaur kale, features dark blue-green leaves that have an embossed texture. It has a slightly sweeter taste than curly kale. In this blog, we'll discuss how you can benefit from including kale in your diet.  

Kale is a green leafy vegetable and an easily recognizable member of the cabbage family. It is known for having one of the highest anti-oxidant counts of any vegetable and it's also a great source of calcium, b-vitamins, fiber and chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a pigment found in many plants, particularly green leafy ones like kale and parsley (also found in Green Vitality). It activates enzymes in your body to produce the vitamins K, A and E. Including chlorophyll in your diet can aid in flushing the toxins from your system and cleaning out the intestines. It has also been shown to soothe the gastrointestinal tract and can also suppress body odor!

Like other cruciferous vegetables, kale has been the focus of research into possible cancer preventing properties. Kale is rich in nutrients, glucosinolates, which have been studied for possible anti-cancer properties. Glucosinolates are sulphur containing glycosides that accumulate in tissues of cruciferous crops and are responsible for the aroma and flavor of these veggies. They have been found in preliminary animal research to be potent inhibitors of cancer in specific organs. 

The next time you're looking to get some vitamin-packed, delicious kale in your day-to-day, try Living Juice's organic, cold-pressed Green Vitality. Or if you're trying to sneak some of the healthy veggie into your kid's (or partner's) diet try our sweeter Pineapple Punch!