“It tastes horrible!” “It’s the latest super food.” “It’ll save your life but it tastes real bad!” are the reactions I got when I asked people on the internet where I could find kale in Pakistan.

None of these comments helped of course, and they only reinforced what I already knew about this dark leafy green plant that’s all the rage around the world: it’s the super food of super foods but is terrible to taste. And that it’s hard to find.

The truth is, kale tastes like what one would expect a leafy plant to taste like. It doesn’t have a strong, stinging flavour as spinach or rocket leaves, neither is it as tasteless and crunchy as iceberg lettuce. Fresh kale lies somewhere in between. If you leave it lying in the fridge for a few days, that’s when it starts losing colour and gets bitter.

Finding kale in Pakistan wasn’t easy at first. Some time back the vegetable wallas that usually stock exotic foreign produce experimented by stocking it, but due to lack of demand (possibly due to lack of awareness regarding the nutritional qualities of this plant) they stopped. Don’t despair yet, with the internet comes many other resources in the form of ordering your groceries online from small-scale organic growers. And yes, all of them happen to have kale on their list.

In this tale of the kale, we bring you one of the leanest, greenest and healthiest foods on the planet

Kale comes from the same family as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, collard greens and Brussels sprouts, and is one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. By eating more Kale, you dramatically increase the total nutrient quantity of your diet. Kale contains more iron per calorie than beef, and also has a high quantity of calcium. It’s also one of the foods with the highest percentage of Vitamin K, which protects the body against various forms of cancers and is necessary for good bone health and prevents blood clotting. This vegetable helps in lowering cholesterol levels in the body and is high in both Vitamin A (great for eyesight and skin) and Vitamin C (important for developing a healthy immune system).

Kale also contains Omega-3 fatty acids which is essential for good skin and hair, prevents the body from developing arthritis, autoimmune disorders, etc. And finally, very much like other greens in its family (broccoli for one), it contains powerful antioxidants, which also help protect from various forms of cancer, and keeps the body healthy.

There are many different ways you can have kale: you can take a bowlful of it, sprinkle rock or Himalayan salt and massage olive oil over it until the green leaves of kale turn into a shinier, darker green. You can blend it with apples, lemon, ginger and watermelon to make juice. You can even sprinkle some olive oil on the leaves and straighten them out on a pan and bake them to make kale chips. They say steaming kale radically increases its benefits. Experiment with kale and find which way you like it the most.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 24th, 2015

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