Benefits of Cruciferous Vegetables
I hope you're enjoying these articles as much as I am in researching them. Not long ago I posted a recipe for enchilada chicken over "riced" cauliflower. My wife is not as adventurous as I am when it comes to trying new foods, but the taste was so mild, and the texture was great, so we have a winner with riced cauliflower.
There are more benefits to cauliflower than just a low glycemic index, or low carbohydrate content. Cauliflower is in the family of vegetables known as Cruciferous, along with kale, arugula, cabbage, brussle sprouts, broccoli, bok choy, collards, radish, and similar green leaf vegetables.
In Casarett & Doull's Toxicology, it says that the chemicals we come in contact with from processing, herbicides, and pesticides "... that produce systemic toxicity do not cause a similar degree of toxicity in all organs; instead, they usually elicit their major toxicity in only one or two organs. These sites are referred to as the target organs of toxicity of a particular chemical. The target organ of toxicity i often not the site of the highest concentration of the chemical. For example, lead is concentrated in the bone, but its toxicity is due to its effects in soft tissues, particularly the brain. DDT is concentrated in adipose tissue but produces no known toxic effects in that tissue. The target organ of toxicity most frequently involved in systemic toxicity is the CNS (brain and spinal cord)."
Through the magic of Biotransformation of Xenobiotics, our body is designed to eliminate chemicals and poisons through our liver, however many toxins are lipotrophic (fat soluable) instead of hydrotrophic (watar soluable) and get stuck in fatty tissue instead of being flushed by the kidneys and instead are readily absorbable by our body.
Our liver is able with the help of enzymes to break down lipotropic toxins into hydrotrophic toxins that can get flushed out by our kidneys, but the chronic exposure to these chemicals causes the liver to be overwhelmed and the backup of toxins go into the thyroid, uterus, breasts and lymphatic system and be a contributing factor to cancer.
This is where our friend, the cauliflower, along with all of our other cruciferous vegetables come into play. These helpful vegetables speed up the conversion process in the liver and help reduce the backlog of toxins waiting to be processed.
Reducing the amount of toxins we ingest by eliminating useless foods like soda pop, processed foods, and instead growing your own food, buying organic, or certified naturally grown produce, meats, eggs, and dairy will help reduce the toxins we take in, and increasing the amount of cruciferous vegetables we eat will help reduce the backlog of toxins already present and may even reverse some of the damage we've already caused our systems.
If you've enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends, and if you would like to see more fun articles and recipes, please subscribe.
If you would like to help The Discipleship Center to change the lives of those who are in need of direction, rehabilitation and broken lives renewed, please consider making a donation today.
