Discover an obscure, inexpensive, easy to use tasty superfood - arugula

Saturday, September 17, 2011 by: Paul Fassa
Tags: arugula, superfood, health news

(NaturalNews) There is another cancer preventing cruciferous vegetable that few know about. It is perfect for salads or pesto. Uncooked, the nutrients and enzymes are preserved. It's a green called arugula. Arugula's health benefits exceed most other greens. Unlike most cruciferous veggies, arugula tastes good raw. Preparing arugula is easy and explained near the end of this article.

Arugula Benefits

The dark green leaves let you know arugula is high in chlorophyll. Chlorophyll molecules are similar to red blood cells. A major difference is that iron atoms are in the centers of blood cell molecules, while plant chlorophyll centers contain magnesium atoms.

If you've read articles by Dr. Mark Sircus, you'll know the importance of magnesium and its contribution to over 300 metabolic functions in the human body.

Cooking greens enough to cause them to slightly lose their bright green luster degrades their chlorophyll content. Fortunately, arugula is great in salads with dark green lettuce or in pesto. Intact chlorophyll helps prevent DNA and liver damage from aflatoxins, which sometimes appear in corn or corn products, peanuts and peanut products, and some tree nuts.

The elusive but important vitamin K family is found in arugula. Vitamin K2 is important for bone absorption of calcium. This obviously promotes bone health. But not so well understood is vitamin K's contribution to cardiovascular health. Vitamin K also minimizes brain matter calcifications that often result in Alzheimer's disease.

Most of the plaque that forms inside arterial wall surfaces is calcification from calcium that bones and teeth don't absorb. Cholesterol is not the culprit. Vitamin K helps keep calcium from collecting in the bloodstream and other soft tissue.

Arugula is high in fiber, which aids digestive elimination. Vitamin B complex is rich in arugula with high amounts of folate, the natural source of folic acid. Arugula is high in vitamin C, A, and P. In addition to magnesium, iron and copper content is strong in arugula as well.

Additionally, the phytochemicals in arugula contain lots of sulfur compounds, which enable the body's cells to detox further by helping the liver create more glutathione. Glutathione is the master antioxidant that is created by the liver if the right nutrient precursors are available.

It is difficult to find a more nutritious single plant food than arugula.

Let's Eat!

Arugula seems to be appearing more and more in organic food stores. Ask around. The accent is on the U in arugula. Though sometimes cleaned and packaged, buying arugula in fresh bunches with their roots is optimum. Do your own cleaning. Arugula bunches resemble fresh spinach bunches.

Arugula should be eaten often to obtain and maintain its benefits. To make it easier, arugula tastes better uncooked than all other cruciferous veggies. Mixing arugula with other greens in salads are obvious easy choices.

Pesto is another tasty choice for consuming arugula raw with its nutrients intact. You can make a pesto using arugula combined with the traditional basil leaves and/or cilantro. Cilantro is recognized as a detoxifying agent, especially effective for eliminating mercury.

All pesto mixes include lots of leaves of your choice, a few pine nuts or walnuts, some fresh garlic cloves, sea salt, grated parmesan cheese(optional), and lots of cold pressed olive oil all blended in a food processor. When you get a thick, porous texture, apply the pesto to pasta or any other food, even sandwiches.

Whatever isn't used can be sealed and refrigerated. A thin topping of olive oil inhibits oxidation. Here's a recipe example to get you started. Substitute or include arugula/ cilantro with less or no basil. http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/fresh_basil...

Sources for more information include:

Dr. Mark (not Sircus) video on sulfites in the cruciferous arugula http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDs50eEOoMY

More on arugula health benefits http://guide2herbalremedies.com/health-benef...

Explaining chlorophyll http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=george&...

Nutritional content of arugula http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/arugula.htm...

Arugula pound for pound best cancer fighting food http://www.brighthub.com/health/diet-nutriti...

Cruciferous Vegetables - Crammed With Anticancer Power
http://breastcancer.about.com/od/cancerfight...

Aflotoxins explained http://www.fda.gov/food/foodsafety/foodborne...



About the author:
Paul Fassa is dedicated to warning others about the current corruption of food and medicine and guiding them towards direction for better health with no restrictions on health freedom.

You can check out his many non-compromising cutting edge, non-fluff articles here https://www.naturalnews.com/Author712.html

And you can visit his blog at http://healthmaven.blogspot.com