Cabbage doesn’t receive all the fan-fare that other members of the cruciferous vegetable family do, but it should. What is cabbage good for?
A better question might be, what isn’t it good for? As one of the most potent medicinal foods available, including cabbage as a regular part of your diet (two or three times a week, or, even better, four or five) may offer many significant health benefits.
1. Cabbage Has Cancer-Preventing Properties
The George Mateljan Foundation recently highlighted some of the latest news about cabbage and topping the list was its potential for cancer prevention. Nearly 500 studies have looked into this connection and revealed that cabbage’s anti-cancer powers are likely related to:
- Antioxidants
Cabbage contains powerful antioxidants like vitamins A and C and phytonutrients such as thiocyanates, lutein, zeaxanthin, isothiocyanates and sulforaphane, which stimulate detoxifying enzymes and may protect against breast, colon and prostate cancers.
Sulforaphane, also selectively targets cancer stem cells, and by doing so it effectively prevents the cancer from spreading and/or recurring. Antioxidants also help protect your body from oxidative stress.
The George Mateljan Foundation noted:
“Without sufficient intake of antioxidants, our oxygen metabolism can become compromised, and we can experience a metabolic problem called oxidative stress. Chronic oxidative stress in and of itself can be a risk factor for development of cancer.”
- Anti-inflammatory Properties
You need some level of inflammation in your body to stay healthy, however it’s also possible, and increasingly common, for the inflammatory response to get out of hand.
If your immune system mistakenly triggers an inflammatory response when no threat is present, it can lead to significant inflammation-related damage to the body, a condition linked to cancer and other diseases, depending on which organs the inflammation is impacting.
