The Secret Health Benefits Of Kale (That No One Talks About) | Healthy Diet | JJ Virgin

hey it's JJ Virgin New York Times bestselling author of The Virgin Diet the virgin diet cookbook and the sugar impact diet here to answer the age old question of why the heck is kale so cool seems like it's everywhere anywhere you go Health restaurants health food stores it's kale kale kale and you know you can make junk food out of anything so FYI if you're buying those kale chips that are the chocolate chip ones first of all they're delicious but second all they're candy all right but let's talk about why you should be eating kale and then I'm going to show you what you need to do with kale yes you're going to be playing with your kale to make it taste a heck of a lot better cuz if you're like me I'm a super taster it can be a bit bitter but we're going to fix that so why is kale so cool besides it's kind of cute it's filled with powerful antioxidants such as carotenoids and flavonoids and those help protect against various cancers first of all it total low calorie nutrient dens food high in fiber and one cup of kale leaves has only 36 calories 5 gram of fiber and of course no fat but we're not worried about fat anyway now because it's such a great source of fiber it's also great for digestion and detoxification high in iron and that's good for good liver function and by the way per calorie kale has more iron than meat does it also has more calcium per calorie than milk does it's also high in vitamin A which is great for your vision and for pretty skin and vitamin C which is important for your immune system your metabolism hydration and handling stress not like any of us have any of that and vitamin K which is really helpful for different cancers and as we know Vitamin K is the partner of vitamin D you need both of those for healthy bones and a great immune system so you go to the store you're sold you're like okay JJ I'm eating my kale so you go to the store and you're like what what do I I do which do I pick so let's go through a different couple different KES here and curly kale now I'm going to ask off camera which is the curly kale this one this one okay see this is real life here so the curly kale is usually dark green or purple and that's why it threw me cuz I got purple over here too it's got little ruffled leaves this is probably what you think of when you think of kale it's kind of uh pungent and peppery and bitter the younger it is though the less bitter it is do not buy old kale note to self all right next this I think this is the coolest looking kale ever this is called lanto or Dino kale it's got these really cool dark blue green leaves I mean look at this kind of wrinkly firm texture actually um Susan who just was telling me which kale was the curly kale was a little bit afraid of this kale it's tall and narrow and it keeps this texture after it's cooked so it's kind of fun too is you can see that you can use this one to make all sorts of cool like rollups and stuff now this is a little sweeter and a little more delicate than the curly kale over here it's got this deep earthy taste it's not so bitter it's a little bit sweet so if you're like one of those bitter people like me this Dino kale it's probably better for you okay and the other one red Russian kale check this out it's kind of looks like a big Oak Leaf or a large arugula leaf or maybe a cabbage kind of looks cabbagey right it's very fibrous so with all of these by the way I'm going to show you how you're going to get those stems off cuz the stems are really where it's bittery and icky so it's little red purpley and by the way this this baby over here is the sweetest of The KES now how do you know what to look for when you're looking for kale you want it to be firm and deeply colored and have really hearty hearty thick stems okay then you want to keep in a cool environment I keep it in my veggie produce uh little drawer in my fridge because if you put it into warm temperatures it's going to wilt and then it will not taste good anymore you want to look for fresh unwilted not brown or yellowing or holy kale right so ideally to get smaller size leaves because they're more tender and they're milder than the big big leaves probably those big leaves are the old leaves remember we said about don't get old kale you can get kale all year long and it's really though it's Peak from the middle of winter through the beginning of Spring all right then you get your kale you're at the store you bring it home you're going to put it in a plastic storage bag and you try to get as much air out of the bag as possible and then put it in the fridge and it keeps there for about 5 days but you're going to eat it pretty quickly right right now the longer it's stored the more bitter it gets and you want to make sure that you don't wash it before you store it because that'll make it spoil okay now here's where things get really fun because you're going to play with your kale why when I say play with with massage kale is a really rough texture and that when you get that in your mouth it's a lot to chew on and a lot to do before you can even start digesting it when you massage it it makes it easier for your body to handle to digest and move through your body and also it's going to make it not as bitter it's going to taste better so here's what you're going to see as you massage your kale it's going to start breaking down some of the cellulous the leaves actually darken and Shrink to half their size becomes prettier more vibrant green and it actually tastes s sweeter and less bitter I was going to say sweeter and bitter but it tastes sweeter and less bitter so obviously this is what you want to do the other thing you want to make sure is you're going to start and you are going to pull the stems off the kale lead so Susan just taught me how to do this by the way I was doing it wrong although as long as you get the kale the uh stems off the kale leaves it's not wrong right so you're going to pull off the stems now I already dest stemmed some so you saw what I did the way I did it is just fold it over and and then I grabbed and held on to and pulled okay so you just grab your stems off so now I've got this nice Bowl here of kale so here's where things get fun we are going to now start massaging the kale so what you want to do is you want to put a little bit of sea salt in here little sea salt little bit of extra virgin olive oil about teaspoon depends how much of course kale you have a little lemon juice what you want to think about here is these are your tenderizers okay and then we're going to just start this uh this little kneading action and we're going to tear the kale leaves apart right as we're kneading through here and massaging and tearing and really working that lemon juice and olive oil and sea salt through kind of fun kind of fun now here's what I would tell you is if you want to get your kids to eat kale let them play with it let them play with their food it's good to do but you know the deal is first time that you or your kids eat kale you probably will not think this is the best thing you've ever had but if you get more involved in an exposure equals preference and if you can get your kids to get involved here because you know what you what you make you want to eat they'll be more likely to do it there's all sorts of great things you can do with this kale so you see see how I'm doing this here this is no big deal to do so what do you do once you have this well I love to use this in my salads but I don't make just a straight kale salad that's like a little bit too much kale so what I'll do is I'll take kale and I'll use one of the salad Choppers and chop it up pretty fine after massaging it and then I'll add in some arugula and maybe some roma or some spinach so I add in a couple different things it's also nice when you have this if you have some extras toss it into your soup toss it into if you're making a sauce it's great to throw in toss it into a sauté toss it in with some quinoa but my favorite thing of all so delicious and one of those things that you can never make too many of because they're always going to go away are kale chips now in my sugar impact diet cookbook I have Chipotle kale chips which is even better because when you do Chipotle it actually boosts your metabolism so I could actually call those fat burning kale chips yum so you know if you look at the store at the kale chips in the store what I see with most of those kale chips is they are junk food sorry because they've thrown in nutritional yeast and a bunch of other stuff into there and they've actually taken a good thing and made it really caloric Without Really adding a whole lot of good stuff to it so this is one that you'll want to make at home really easy to do so inexpensive too and it's a great one to have your kids doing too makes it fun and again I have Chipotle kale chips that I love but you can do it with sea salt and black pepper you could do some garlic you can make these any way you want to you can even sweeten them up a little bit with some cinnamon the bottom line is play with your cake have fun with it and start adding it to as many things as you can because you can't beat the nutrient density of kale

Channel: JJ Virgin

Views: 105,952

Keywords: The Virgin Diet, The Sugar Impact Diet, Virgin Diet Cookbook, fat burning, burn fat, kale, curly kale, lacinato kale, dinosaur kale, kale chips, kale chip recipe, how to pick kale, how to store kale, how to de-stem kale, digestion, detoxification, iron, Vitamin K, anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense, jj virgin, holistic nutrition, holistic health, women's health, womens health, over 40, over 50, wellness

Id: 2nexE7SYbvU

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2015