Hidden SuperFood: The Secret Life of Kale

Few foods commonly available at the produce stand are as beneficial to your health as kale. And yet, sadly, it is more commonly found dressing up something not as healthy in a display case as a decoration than on someone's plate where it belongs.
Kale is actually a form of cabbage that evaded domestication, sharing many of the same traits as wilder plant relatives unafraid of holding on to their bitter principle, and relatively unruly appearance.
Kale is perfectly content letting its luscious green leafy hair down, being the 'hippie' member of a family that includes the more tightly wound broccoli, cauliflower and the Brussel sprout, whose greater respectability as far as most restaurant menus go

This means kale is more likely to be found forgotten, shriveling up somewhere on the bottom shelf of someone's refrigerator, no doubt possessed by someone with every intention (but not the time and appetite enough) to eat it.
But please do not underestimate this formidable plant, which grows as high as six to seven feet in the right conditions, casting a shadow as long as the impressive list of beneficial nutritional components it contains.
Its nutritional density, in fact, is virtually unparalleled among green leafy vegetables. Consider too that during World War II, with rationing in full effect, the U.K. encouraged the backyard cultivation of this hearty, easy to grow plant for the Dig for Victory campaign that likely saved many from sickness and starvation. Over a half century later, kale's status as a former cultural nutritional hero has faded into near oblivion ... until now, we hope!

Kale Contains ALL the Essential Amino Acids and 9 Non-Essential Ones

You will notice that one cup of raw kale contains less than 1 gram of fat (0.3 grams to be exact), 2 grams of protein, and subtracting the 1 gram of fiber from the total carbohydrate content (7), an effective carb content of 6 grams per serving, which is almost entirely complex carbohydrate, i.e. "starch." This means it has a 3:1 carbohydrate-to-protein ratio – an exceptionally high amount of protein for any vegetable, and one reason why it has recently been acclaimed as the "new beef."

Indeed, like meat, kale contains all 9 essential amino acids needed to form the proteins within the human body: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, valine – plus, 9 other non-essential ones for a total of 18:

Consider too that compared to meat, the amino acids in kale are easier to extract. When consuming a steak, for instance, the body has to expend great metabolic resources to break down the massive, highly complex, and intricately folded protein structures within mammalian flesh back down into their constituent amino acids;

Then, later, these extracted amino acids must be reassembled back into the same, highly complex, intricately folded and refolded human proteins from which our body is made. This is a time-consuming, energy-intensive process, with many metabolic waste products released in the process.
For the same reason that massive mammalian herbivores like cows, for instance, eat grass -- not other animals -- kale can be considered anabolic, "meaty," and worthy of being considered as a main course in any meal. The nice thing, too, is that less is needed to fulfill the body's protein requirements.

Also, kale is so much lower on the food chain than beef, that it doesn't bio-accumulate as many, and as much, of the toxins in our increasingly polluted environment. And this, of course, doesn't even touch on the great "moral debate" concerning avoiding unnecessary harm to sentient beings, i.e. eating kale is morally superior than eating/killing animals.

Kale is an Omega-3 Diamond In the Rough

While it is considered a "fat free" vegetable, it does contain biologically significant quantities of essential fatty acids – you know, the one's your body is not designed to create and must get from the things we eat or suffer dire consequences.

In fact, you will notice it contains more omega-3 than omega-6, which is almost unheard of in nature. It is a general rule that you will find a 40:1 or higher ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 found in most grains, seeds, nuts and beans. Peanuts, for instance, have 1,800 times higher omega-6 fat levels than omega-3,¹ which (taken in isolation) is a pro-inflammatory and unhealthy ratio. Kale, therefore, is a superstar as far as essential fatty acids go, and especially considering that all of its naturally occurring fat-soluble antioxidants protect these fragile unsaturated fats from oxidizing.

Kale's Vitamin Content More Pays for Itself Many Times Over

Now to the vitamins. Kale is a king of carotenoids. Its vitamin A activity is astounding. One cup contains over 10,000 IU's, or the equivalent of over 200% the daily value. Also, consider that most of this vitamin A (retinol) is delivered the form of beta-carotene, which in its natural form is the perfect delivery system for retinol (two retinol molecules attached to one another), as it is exceedingly difficult to get too much. If you compare it to the synthetic vitamin A used in many mass market foods and vitamins, it is an order of magnitude or higher safer.

Kale is an Eye-Saving Super Food Rich In Vitamins

Kale has a few more surprises left in the "vitamin" department. It turns out that it is loaded with both lutein and zeaxanthin at over 26 mg combined, per serving. Lutein comes from the Latin word luteus meaning "yellow," and is one of the best known carotenoids in a family containing at least 600. In the human eye it is concentrated in the retina in an oval-shaped yellow spot near its center known as the macula (from Latin macula, "spot" + lutea, "yellow"). This "yellow spot" acts as a natural sunblock, which is why adequate consumption of lutein and zeaxanthin may prevent macular degeneration and other retinal diseases associated with ultraviolet light-induced oxidative stress.
Keep in mind that a 26 mg dose of lutein + zeaxanthin can easily cost a $1 per dose. In effect, one could calculate the cost reduction of this added bonus into kale's sticker price, which incidentally, is insultingly low considering all it has to offer. How, after all, does one price the preservation of your vision?
Next, the vitamin C content, at over 80 mg per serving, is impressive. Consider, this is not ascorbic acid (which is semi-synthetic, and divorced from the food factors that help confer its amazing vitamin activity). Food vitamin C is a rare and precious element in the modern diet that is an absolute requirement for us to maintain our health. It can be likened to condensed sunlight frozen within the plant and released into our bodies after we eat it. Those who know kale well, can feel a happy little glow form within them after consuming it. And, I imagine, if we had the proper measuring device, we might see a slight uptick in intensity of the biophotons² that are continually emitted from our body.

Kale: The New "Vegetable Cow"?

Now, just when you thought kale was just too good to be true, there is the matter of its remarkable mineral composition. Of course, the quality and mineral and microbial density of the soil within which it is grown is a factor, but kale generally has the ability to provide an excellent source of minerals, in what is known as food-state. Unlike inorganic minerals, e.g. limestone, bone meal, oyster shell, the calcium in kale is vibrating with life-sustaining energy and intelligence.
At 90 milligrams per cup, this highly bioavailable calcium actually contains more calcium per gram than whole milk! Also, a calcium bioavailability study³ from 1990, comparing milk and care in human subjects, found that kale calcium was 25% better absorbed, proving that the propaganda in support of milk as the ultimate source of calcium isn't as mooo-ving as commonly believed.

Just to be a bit exact about how much calcium there is in kale, for every gram of kale there is 1.35 mg of calcium. For every gram of whole milk, there is 1.13 mg. The difference, also, is that milk calcium is complexed with a sticky protein known as casein. This is why Elmer's glue was once made of milk protein. It is exceedingly hard for one-stomached (monogastric) mammals (that's us) to digest, and so, the calcium is difficult, if not impossible (in some) to liberate.
Also, casein proteins require a large amount of hydrochloric acid to break down with our protein-digesting pancreatic enzymes.Over time, this can lead to some metabolic acidosis which may further leach calcium from our mineral stores,

For example, bones, teeth, causing a net loss in calcium following the consumption of cow's milk products heavy in casein, especially cheese. Kale, like most vegetables, on the other hand, are alkalinizing and therefore actually reduce the body's requirements for acid-neutralizing minerals (e.g. calcium, magnesium, sodium, silica, potassium) and therefore reducing the total amount of calcium we need to stay in pH and mineral balance. Kale, therefore, not only contains more of the right form of calcium, but may actually reduce your daily bodily requirements for it. Move over moo juice, there's a new "vegetable cow" on the block!
Kale is also an excellent source of magnesium, which is why it is green. That deep, dark chlorophyll within its leaves contains one atom of magnesium per molecule. And considering how many of us are dying from excess elemental calcium⁴, adding additional sources of magnesium (which acts to balance out calcium) can have live-saving health benefits⁵.
Finally, kale is more than just a nutritional "superfood." It comes from a long line of plant healers, and could very well be considered and (given future FDA drug approval⁶) used as a medicine. Newly emergent biomedical literature now shows it may be of value in the treatment of cancer, elevated blood lipids, glaucoma, and various forms of chemical poisoning.

We have made available the first-hand abstracts on our Kale Health Benefits⁷ research page, for those who, like us, enjoy geeking out to the science. Also, kale, like most cruciferous vegetables, is exceedingly high in several other extensively research anticancer compounds, such as sulforaphane and indole-3-carbinol⁸. The data set on these are even more impressive than on kale itself, with over 140 disease states potentially remedies for sulforaphane alone: sulforaphane health benefits⁹.

How to Get Kale into Your Diet

Here is a great tip worth trying. Instead of eating an egg for breakfast with toast, try chopping up half a bunch of kale, a quarter of an onion, and stir fry it in a tablespoon of olive oil for a few minutes till it is tender. Make sure to add in a pinch of sea salt (I prefer Bragg's liquid aminos), a pinch of pepper, a teaspoon of lemon or if you are like me, use Ume Plum Vinegar. Also, go to your local health food store and get dulse flakes.
Note: Dulse flakes can be found in a pepper shaker like container. Kale, like most Cruciferous vegetables, contain naturally occurring goitrogens (or unnatural ones that have accumulated in them, such as perchlorate¹⁰ and various agrichemicals, especially in non-organically farmed vegetables) which can block the ability of the thyroid to utilize the iodine required to produce thyroid hormones (T4, T3). Since so many folks are already completely deficient in iodine, it really can't hurt (excepting rare cases of hyperthyroidism). Therefore it is a good practice to use it as a kale-specific antidote seasoning. Do all this and I promise you, there is a good chance but it will taste great, and leave you feeling deeply and completely nourished!

About the Author

Sayer Ji is the founder and director of GreenMedInfo.com and an advisory board member at the National Health Federation, an international nonprofit, consumer-education, health-freedom organization. He co-authored the book Cancer Killers: The Cause Is The Cure, and is working on another one with Tania Melkonian titled EATomology: An Edible Philosophy of Food.

Is Your Pet Receiving Any of These Useless Vaccines?

By Dr. Becker

Today I have a very special guest returning for a second time to talk with us and give us the tremendous benefit of his knowledge, Dr. Ronald Schultz.
Dr. Schultz heads up the Department of Pathobiological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. He’s joining me today on behalf of an important project he’s been involved with for several years – the Rabies Challenge Fund. The purpose of the fund is to determine the duration of immunity conveyed by rabies vaccines, with the goal of extending the required interval for rabies boosters to five and then to seven years.
Dr. Schultz has agreed to spend some time today, in the first half of our two-part discussion, talking about core and non-core vaccines in cats and dogs.
I asked him first to briefly explain the difference between the two types of vaccines.

Core versus Non-Core Vaccines

Dr. Schultz replied that several years ago, the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) decided to look at all the USDA-licensed vaccines that were available for cats. They put them into categories, with the first and most important category being the core vaccines, which are those vaccines that every cat should receive.
Then they went back over the list looking for vaccines that should not be given to any cat, and placed those in a category called not-recommended vaccines.
All remaining vaccines on the list – those that didn’t fall into either the core or not-recommended vaccine categories – were placed in a third category called non-core or optional vaccines. These were to be given based on individual need, after considering a number of factors. So that’s how categories of vaccines came into existence.

The Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) Vaccine: Should Every Cat Receive It?

In the most updated feline vaccination guidelines, the feline leukemia virus (FeLV) vaccine has been moved from the non-core to the core category for kittens. Dr. Schultz says he would like to see every kitten receive two doses of the vaccine, administered from two to six weeks apart. (If the interval is longer than six weeks, you must start the protocol over.) He feels that with those two doses and a re-vaccination at one year, we can immunize a large percentage of the cat population against feline leukemia.
Dr. Schultz says the new guidelines recommend revaccination (after the kitten series and the one-year booster) every two to three years, but he doesn’t believe boosters after age one are necessary – especially given the development of age-related resistance.
I asked Dr. Schultz if he thinks even strictly indoor cats with no exposure to other cats should receive the FeLV vaccine, and he thinks they should (I don’t) – mainly because indoor cats very often become outdoor cats. In situations where a cat truly will never go outside or be exposed to other cats, there’s no need for the vaccine. But in Dr. Schultz’s experience, even people with the best intentions don’t wind up keeping their pet indoors at all times.
Dr. Schultz points out that the goal is to achieve population immunity. If the problem of persistently viremic cats (those who carry the virus) can be eliminated through kitten vaccination programs, the disease can be extinguished. Dr. Schultz says his colleagues in Switzerland tell him they have essentially eradicated the feline leukemia virus from that country’s cat population. Switzerland is about the size of many states in the U.S., and Dr. Schultz believes we could eliminate the virus state-by-state, if we did what Switzerland did.
He says he’s been talking to colleagues in Hawaii, trying to convince them to attempt to eliminate it there, since feline leukemia has been a real problem in that state’s cat population for years. Hawaii also has a large feral population, which doesn’t mean the feral cats are any more a threat than housecats. Studies of feline leukemia in feral cats indicate that the prevalence of persistent viremia is no higher than in pet cats – in fact, it’s actually higher in pet cats.
I asked Dr. Schultz if he had concerns about the feline leukemia vaccine and vaccine-associated sarcomas. He answered that initially there were just two types of vaccines linked to injection-site sarcomas in cats, adjuvanted leukemia vaccines and adjuvanted rabies vaccines. Dr. Schultz says it’s important to keep in mind that all adverse reactions to vaccines, including the development of tumors, occur in genetically predisposed cats. In the case of an adjuvanted vaccine, that vaccine in a predisposed cat is more likely to lead to an injection-site sarcoma than a modified-live vaccine.

What About the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) Vaccine and the Chlamydia Vaccine?

I asked Dr. Schultz about the FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus) vaccine for cats. He replied that he does not recommend it. He said when it’s used, there must be at least three doses for the primary immunization, and then annual revaccination. One of the major problems is that there are strains of FIV floating around that the vaccine doesn’t protect against.
In addition, while FIV is a concern, the percentage of infected cats is fairly low. We just don’t see it a lot. FIV isn’t even considered in reviews of what vaccines are necessary for the shelter population.

I asked Dr. Schultz about the chlamydia vaccine. He doesn’t recommend it, either. The vaccine is primarily designed to reduce the incidence of feline infectious respiratory disease complex. In the shelter population, the vaccine hasn’t been helpful, and chlamydia is rare in pet cats. There’s also a feline bordetella vaccine Dr. Schultz does not recommend, because it hasn’t proven beneficial for shelter cats.

Is There Any Need to Run Titers on Cats?

Next I asked Dr. Schultz if he is seeing more cat owners requesting antibody titers these days. He answered that no, very few cat owners bother titering. He says he’s not sure there’s any real need to titer for cats because there’s only one disease we can effectively titer for, and that’s panleukopenia, which is essentially feline parvovirus.

Why Dr. Schultz Prefers the Term “Protective Antibody Testing” to Titering

Dogs are of course a different story, and Dr. Schultz definitely recommends antibody testing. I asked him what terminology he prefers – does he even use the word “titer”? He replied that he prefers either “protective antibody testing” or simply “antibody testing” instead of titers. This is because many tests today return yes-or-no results rather than titers.
Titer tests tend to become a numbers game, whereas tests that return a result of either “yes” (the animal has antibody at a level considered protective) or “no” (the animal does not have antibody at a level considered protective) give the information everyone needs, and no one has to get mired in trying to understand what the titer numbers truly mean. It’s much less confusing and should help veterinarians and pet owners make better decisions about revaccinations.
As I discussed with Dr. Jean Dodds in a recent interview, the whole subject of titers is tremendously confusing. Many veterinarians recommend revaccinations because they simply can’t sort out titer test results. They feel it’s easier to just revaccinate – especially when boarding kennels and grooming salons that receive titer test results often don’t understand them or accept them as proof of a dog’s immunity.

Vaccination or Revaccination is NOT a Guarantee of Protection Against Disease

Dr. Schultz points out that what many people fail to understand is that vaccination or revaccination is by no means an assurance that the animal is protected. He has seen dogs that have been vaccinated repeatedly who have no antibody. When challenged (exposed to a disease), they are susceptible. And that includes rabies vaccines. Dr. Schultz has seen dogs that have been vaccinated five or more times against rabies that have no antibody. In the case of rabies, distemper and parvo, if there’s no antibody, the animal is not protected.
To demonstrate that fact, and to demonstrate that dogs can have lifelong immunity after receiving distemper and parvo vaccines, he keeps them in a distemper and parvo-free environment after their puppy shots. He does not revaccinate them. Seven years later, he checks their antibody levels. If there is antibody present, he challenges them with the virulent virus itself, and they survive it. If they don’t have antibody, he doesn’t challenge them because there’s a high likelihood they will get sick and die.
The presence of antibody, even at low levels, means the immune memory response will kick in and within hours the dog’s body will bring the infection under control. There will be infection, but it won’t cause disease. There’s a big difference between infection and disease. And in fact, reinfection without disease isn’t a bad thing because it leads to natural stimulation of the immune response. A few vaccines can provide sterile immunity. It is called this because the antibody produced is able to completely prevent the virus from infecting the animal, and so can’t reproduce itself. Vaccines that provide sterile immunity are almost always against viruses that produce systemic rather than local disease.
So for example, parvo and distemper vaccines provide sterile immunity for life in most cases, similar to measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines in humans. Dr. Schultz uses the example of his own case of measles when he was 5 years old. There were no measles vaccines back then. But 50 years later, he had his blood drawn for a demonstration for his veterinary students. He sent the blood to the State Laboratory of Hygiene at the University of Wisconsin and they performed a variety of serologic tests. His measles antibody response came back at a level considered protective. Now, how did Dr. Schultz have protective immunity 50 years after being naturally immunized with measles? He can thank his memory effector B cells.
Dr. Schultz explains the discovery of these long-lived plasma cells is fairly recent. They reside in bone marrow and are programmed to continue to produce antibody. A dog that lives on average 15 years will still have long-lived cells that produce antibodies to distemper or parvo at the age of 15.

Useless Vaccines and Why Some Are Still on the Market

The good news is that distemper and parvo are really the only two life-threatening canine diseases still active in our environment. Giardia, for example, is an unfortunate disease, but it’s not life threatening. And according to Dr. Schultz, the really good news is that the giardia vaccine is no longer on the market.
I asked him about the dental plaque vaccine, and he said there’s more good news – it’s no longer on the market, either. It was in clinical trials under USDA authorization for four years. At the end of the four years, when they looked at the results, it was clear the vaccine didn’t work. It was taken off the market, and according to Dr. Schultz, credit is due Pfizer, the manufacturer of the vaccine, because they were willing to pull it.
I asked Dr. Schultz why he thinks some of these totally unnecessary vaccines ever enter the marketplace to begin with. He believes that very often there is some potential for those vaccines to provide benefit. But he also feels it’s critical that there’s a test period that actually determines whether vaccines do or don’t meet the requirements for licensure. Dr. Schultz believes the USDA is looking much more carefully at those types of vaccines now than they used to because these days we understand much more about what immunity is, how to measure it, how it protects us, and how it translates into an effective vaccine.
Dr. Schultz says one of his “favorite” vaccines is the canine coronavirus vaccine. He calls it “a vaccine in search of a disease.” This vaccine came into being back in the late 1970s when canine parvovirus first appeared. No one recognized parvo yet, but dogs were getting sick and many of them also happened to have coronavirus.
As it turns out, every animal has coronavirus -- even puppies. Dr. Schultz says it’s actually a beneficial virus. It doesn’t cause disease by itself. When scientists finally discovered the minute, spherical virus we now know as parvovirus, they found what was making the dogs sick. Meanwhile, Dr. Schultz and some of his colleagues were able to demonstrate that corona, in coexistence with parvo, could enhance the virulence of parvo.
In the 1990s, Dr. Schultz published studies that looked at what benefit the canine coronavirus vaccine might provide in the case of even a dual infection. What it provided was … nothing. But the vaccine still exists even though it has no value. Why? Because veterinarians still buy it. As Dr. Schultz explains, the only thing that removes a licensed vaccine from the market is if the manufacturer discontinues it. That’s what happened to the giardia vaccine and the porphyromonas (dental plaque) vaccine.
So if your vet says your dog needs the canine coronavirus vaccine, you can argue against it because you know its history