Collards

When I first ate collard greens, I used the leaves as wraps and put other yummy food inside. Today I filled raw mini collard leaves with my egg salad: hard boiled egg, avocado, and salt.

Collard greens belong to the same plant family as broccoli, cabbage, and kale. Like broccoli, collards store a compound and an enzyme in separate places inside the leaf. A compound is a substance made of two or more elements joined together. An enzyme is a substance that causes a change to happen.

When raw collards are chopped or chewed, the compound and the enzyme meet and produce a new compound that signals your cells to build their own protective proteins. Those protective proteins neutralize unstable molecules and help your body clear out harmful substances.

Heat changes the enzyme so the enzyme can no longer work with the compound to produce the new compound your body uses.

Eating collards raw protects the enzyme. In addition, your body receives more vitamin C and folate from the raw collards because heat breaks down those nutrients.

If you do cook collards, chopping them first and letting the leaves sit for a while before heating gives the enzyme time to work, and a quick steam or sauté keeps more nutrients in the leaf than long boiling. If collards are simmered, the liquid in the pot holds nutrients that moved out of the leaves. In the southern United States, that liquid is called pot likker, and people have consumed it for generations instead of pouring it away.

Eat collards with fat

Collards are high in vitamin A and vitamin K. Both vitamins dissolve in fat rather than in water, so your body absorbs more of them when fat is in the same meal. The egg and avocado in my egg salad help my body absorb those vitamins.

Calcium your body can use

Collards provide calcium, and your body absorbs the calcium in collards well, even raw.

You are welcome to wrap your food in a leaf.

Stacy 🌺

Information in this post comes from my learning and research.

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I share my experiences and my perspective. Eating and healing look different for everyone. If you are struggling with food or your relationship with your body, please find support. You don’t have to do this alone.