You think because you’ve made homemade kale chips a few times that you’re an expert, huh? Well, there’s more to this popular superfood than meets the eye — or the tastebuds. Sound smart the next time you talk about green juicing with these 15 things you might not know about kale.
- Kale is packed with over 900% your daily allotment of vitamin K, 659% of vitamin A, and (a comparitively-paltry-sounding) 14% of calcium.
- It’s got more vitamin C than an orange. Yes, for real.
- Cooking kale doesn’t diminish any of its nutritional benefits — score!
- Kale has become so enormously popular that farming of it grew 57% between 2007 and 2012 …
- … and yet still farmers fret that they won’t be able to supply the world’s consistent demand for kale.
- A British company crossbred Brussels sprouts and kale into a dainty green vegetable called “kalettes,” which resemble tiny cabbages but taste like nuts.
- Other names for “kalettes” include “BrusselKale,” “Flower Sprouts” and the utterly mystifying “Lollipops.”
- A publisher synthesized two zeitgeists at once with a cookbook of kale recipes called 50 Shades of Kale — I bet you didn’t think that you could eat kale for dessert or that it would be so sexy!
- Kale has made its way into skincare products and nail polish.
- Most of the kale in the U.S. in grown in California.
- Consuming too much kale and other cruciferous vegetables are linked to hyperthyroidism, which causes a rapid heartbeat, sweating, and other icky symptoms …
- … and kidney stones. (Ouch!)
- Whole Food tried to make “kalegating” (tailgating with kale) and “kale pong” (beer pong with kale) a thing.
- This year, Zagat guides declared kale “over” as a dining trend. (Bacon is also “over” apparently. Yeah, right.)
- Prior to Winter Storm Juno, AKA the Blizzard of 2015, news outlets on the East Coast were reporting a kale shortage at supermarkets as people stocked up for the big storm.
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