In one of the conversations with some girlfriends who recently relocated to New York, “cauliflower gnocchi” from Trader Joe’s can’t seem to leave our conversation. It has gotten so drastic that the bunch would queue right outside the Trader Joe in Manhattan just before the doors open in the morning every Monday. In barely an hour, the frozen storage where stacks of cauliflower gnocchi once sat an hour ago would be empty. I couldn’t quite seem to figure out this fascination with this boxes of frozen food but at a glance, perhaps it was telling of how delicious and nutritious cauliflower could be and how it can be anything from gnocchi to pizza crust to even an amazing replacement for kung pao chicken. When it comes to cauliflower, the possibilities really are unlimited and when you consider how nutritious cauliflowers are as a vegetable, you would start appreciating them a lot more.
What Are Cauliflowers?
You will know cauliflower as a member of the cruciferous family of vegetables. Wonder why broccoli looks like the coloured version of cauliflowers? That’s probably because cauliflowers are actually a cousin of the broccoli in this vegetable family. As it contains a lot of nutrients from vitamins, minerals, antioxidants to phytochemicals, you can be certain that its appeal is boundless. Coupled that with how cauliflowers are extremely versatile, you can easily include them in your meals either into your salads, as a stir-fry, as a soup and even seasoned and mashed like you would with mashed potatoes.
Benefits of Cauliflowers
I worry that I might just run out of words when communicating the many benefits of cauliflowers. Truth be told, it is such because of how it contains so much fibre, vitamins, antioxidants and phytonutrients that keep us in the pink of our health. Read on to find out more about why cauliflowers might just be regarded as the king of vegetables.
Combat Cancer
The lovely thing about cauliflowers is the fact that they can control cancer. Because of how all cauliflowers seem to contain sulforaphane, a compound that has been effective in the killing of cancer stem cells, that would imply that the consumption of cauliflowers would slow down tumour growth. What’s even better is when you combine the common spice of turmeric, the active compound of curcumin in it would make it much more effective in the prevention and treating of prostate cancer.
Provides Anti-inflammatory Properties
There can be a million reasons why the immune system in our body can just wrestle out of control and trigger an inflammatory response even when there is no threat present. That could be disastrous since it might just lead to inflammation-related damage to your body and that is an issue that is linked with cancer and other diseases that are highly dependent on which organs gets triggered by the inflammatory response. Why cauliflowers are recommended is that they all contain a wealth of anti-inflammatory nutrients to help keep your inflammation under control like indole-3-carbinol or l3C.
Antioxidant Boost
Cauliflowers are such a delight for our skin because of how they are packed with so many of these antioxidants and phytonutrients like vitamin-C, beta-carotene, kaempferol, quercetin, rutin and many others. These antioxidants are important for our body since they shield our cells against the onslaught of attack by free radicals that might cause your skin to ramp up on those signs of ageing like wrinkles and fine lines. For those who don’t have an army of antioxidants to fall back on, they might find themselves at risk of oxidative stress and that would lead to accelerated tissue and organ damage.
Boost Our Brain Health
While most people don’t eat cauliflowers solely because of the choline content in it. This B vitamin is superb in its role in brain development. For pregnant moms, you would realise that cauliflowers feature heavily in your meals and this is because choline intake during this crucial period actually boosts cognitive function, improves learning and memory in your child. Not merely for the little ones, choline has been found to reduce and slow down age-related memory decline as the perfect vegetable to protect our minds in the years in our later part of life.
Final Note
Because of how nutritious cauliflowers can be, it doesn’t strike us as any surprise to know that cauliflowers are at the top of your grocery list the next time you go to the supermarket. A pro-tip that we recently found out was to look for firm heads of cauliflower that contains no brown or yellow spots on the surface as that is a sign of one that might go bad soon. Another tip that you can take to the kitchen is to place your cauliflower head upside down in a large bowl of cold salt water for a quarter of an hour. Doing this ensures that harmful pesticides are removed and the same would go for any insects that might be in hiding within the buds of the cauliflower.