Brussels sprouts, if there is one vegetable that so many of us seem to dislike it is the Brussels sprout.
Whether it is the memory of being forced to sit at the Sunday dinner table until we had eaten the ones on our plate, or desperately trying to conceal them inside the uneaten Yorkshire pudding or under that piece of chicken skin, many of us have stories of how to tried to avoid to eat them.
According to an interesting article on the Medical News Today website, they are very good for us. Even more importantly, they actually taste ok (I’m not quite willing to say nice yet) when prepared in the oven or in a frying pan as opposed to the old way of boiling them to death.
Brussels sprouts, being a cruciferous vegetable, are good for us. Cast your minds back to the many blogs we have written about broccoli, also a cruciferous vegetable and you may remember talk of a compound called sulforaphane (produced from an compound called glucoraphanin by the enzyme myrosinase). I won’t go into the details here but suffice to say it’s good for you. It has been shown to have beneficial effects on a range of problems, including oxidative stress, cancer, and inflammation.
So with Christmas fast approaching, perhaps it’s time to put away those childhood dislikes and give them another go. You could always just wrap them in bacon to hide the taste.
One last point though, myrosinase, like most enzymes is denatured by heating, so try a small salad with radish or sprouted broccoli before the meal to get the most out of cooked cruciferous vegetables.
This blog was inspired by an article on the Medical News Today website. It is part of their “What are the health benefits of…” series. Well worth a look.