Cabbage

Clean up after yourself. This is a basic element of living in this world … you have to pick up your mess or your life will quickly become unmanageable and unhealthy.

But what about your body dynamic? Inside your body, a gazillion times a second, your cells are bringing in energy, doing things with it, and giving off waste products. And, when you take in something that is nasty and toxic, you’ve got to take out that trash or it will build up and cause illness. This basic ecology works just as well at the cellular level as it does at your family level.

You can’t physically keep your internal cellular mechanism clean and oiled, but you can eat foods that will do that for you.

Listen to this. Over 1,000 men at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center ate 28 servings of vegetables a week. They had a 35% lower risk of prostate cancer. Blah blah blah, we might have guessed that. BUT, those who ate just 3 or more servings of cruciferous veggies per week had a 44% lower prostate cancer risk.

The same thing was found in the Netherlands on over 100,000 people. They followed these people for over 6 years, and found that those eating the most vegetables had a 25% lower risk of colorectal cancers. Neat. However, those eating the most cruciferous vegetables did almost twice as well with a 49% drop in their colorectal cancer risk.

Americans, Netherlanderthals, and also Chinese women in Singapore, who struggle with fetid air pollution levels, returned the identical result. Non-smokers who eat cruciferous vegetables like cabbage had 30% less lung cancer. In smokers, regular cruciferous vegetable consumption reduced lung cancer risk an amazing 69%!

The clean up hitter, in this case, is the indole molecule found in cabbage, broccoli, etc. These compounds activate and stabilize the body’s detox system to dismantle the precursors of cancer. That may be why eating more of these also reduce the risk of breast cancer.

But cabbage is not just about slaw – although slaw qualifies as a Righteous Food. You can also braise with, say, chopped apple and red wine. You can also sauté it with onions as a tasty side dish.

However you serve it, cabbage needs to be a part of your eating life.