Are You Eating Your Kale and Watercress?
The most common food sources for five key phytonutrients were: carrots (beta-carotene), oranges/orange juice (beta-cryptoxanthin), spinach (lutein/zeaxanthin), strawberries (ellagic acid) and mustard (isothiocyanates).
However, for each of these phytonutrients there was a better food source available. These were listed as follows: sweet potatoes (nearly double the beta-carotene of carrots), papaya (15 times more beta-cryptoxanthin than oranges), kale (three times more lutein/zeaxanthin than spinach), raspberries (three times more ellagic acid than strawberries), and watercress (one cup contains as much isothiocyanate as four teaspoonfuls of mustard).
Full article on phytonutrient-rich foods.
No. I don’t eat kale or watercress.
Yuuuucccckkk. Kale is the worst plant on the face of the planet. The rest of it I can deal with. I even will admit to liking the vast majority of those foods. But kale! It’s the worst!
It may be time to broaden your horizons a bit, folks. You just haven’t lived until you’ve tried baked kale chips! Here’s the recipe:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baked-Kale-Chips/Detail.aspx
Kale and sweet potatoes are not favorites of mine. However, I do like the dried papaya slices from the Dollar Store — although I suspect they must be prepared in such a way as to make them unhealthy. I once bought banana chips from the Dollar Store only to discover they were deep fried in palm oil.
Yes, but should we care?
If one is drinking enough orange juice to get whatever the chemical du jour is, who cares if (generally unobtainable and expensive) papaya has more of it?
What is the RDA for beta-cryptoxanthin? You’d think cryptoxanthin and zeaxanthin would be more-or-less interchangeable.
I’m with Linda. I’ll stick with orange juice.