The Controversy of Kale
The ultimate healthy snack? Poison in a vegetable? Welcome to the wild and deeply intriguing controversy of kale.
Kale. The ultimate healthy snack to supercharge your immune system? The all-natural way of putting literal poison into your mouth through a vegetable? The divine cure for any disease? The way to have guaranteed stomach aches and immune weakness? Welcome to the wild, divided controversy of the vegetable that is both loved and hated, to the extremes.
PART I: The Kale Wars
In the realm of kale, it is truly divided. There are people who believe kale is a menace and, when ingested, silently tries to tear the body apart from the inside, and others who value kale as the ultimate superfood to supercharge the immune system.
Since it’s hard to truly pinpoint the most correct answer, we’ll delve deeper into both sides and their arguments.
PART II: Superfood? More like super-poison, claim many.
The people that disagree with the consumption of kale generally do agree that there are some superfood-like properties of kale, like high vitamin content (including Vitamin A and Vitamin K), high calcium and magnesium levels and even some potassium. However, these people, through courses of meticulous research and testing, have claimed certain parts of the vegetable contain compounds that can be dangerous. This includes the discovery that claims kale is a mass collector (officially classified as a hyper-accumulator) of certain metals that can become fatal if too much is consumed. Kale, being an especially strong leafy green, is able to suck every single piece of edible matter out of the soil it grows in, and this usually includes contaminated, molecular pieces of heavy metals, like Thallium.
Thallium is an odourless, tasteless and almost transparent and is a common component of various rodent poison formulas. For rodents, Thallium is especially lethal, and for humans, even small amounts of consumption can lead to heart arrhythmia (a disorder within your heart creating irregular rhythm, usually too slowly or too quickly), extreme nausea, digestive blockage, hair loss and neurological side-effects. Thallium is also a very resistant metal and can survive detoxification methods and curing courses, and can unfortunately, in some cases, permanently remain in the human body. Since this is sadly the case, Thallium has permanently damaged many innocent kale-eaters.
If you took, for instance, somebody is very interested in the superfood properties of kale and regularly drinks a kale and spinach smoothie, daily, you’d find that the Thallium levels in their blood would be much higher than that of somebody who avoids kale altogether. This scientifically-backed statement is most definitely one of the main reasons some people classify kale as threatening.
Or, for a more statistic-forward fact, in a large and extensive investigation carried out by the Food & Drug Administration, 7 in 8 supermarket kale samples tested positive for toxic PFAS chemicals. This greatly contradicts the same study carried out between 2019 and 2021, where there was no contamination found in the kale. This suggests that perhaps before kale was a superfood and became dangerous due to high PFAS content in worldwide soils.
However, not everybody believes these studies and investigations have gone deep enough and still value kale as a glorious superfood to boost health by miles.
PART III: Superfood made to supercharge
Kale offers many properties that widely benefit the entire immune system and all of it’s functions, and as we mentioned earlier, it has been proven kale offers an array of vitamins and minerals, such as Vitamins K, B6, A, C and even a relatively low calorie amount. Kale has been proven to assist with regulating blood pressure, helping the immune system survive and even reducing the risk of certain cancers.
For these reasons alone, and the many, many other superfood benefits kale has to offer, the majority of the world’s population see kale as a very healthy item.
PART IV: Secret superfood?
Before we dive into whether kale truly is toxic or it remains a powerful superfood, we’d like to introduce a new variety of seaweed recently discovered and identified as the successor of kale for those who have abandoned the leafy green. With a flavour profile reminiscent of bacon, the soft and satisfyingly chewy sea vegetable looks like a strip of neon red algae, with the scientific name of palmaria mollie.
Stuffed to the brim with vitamins, minerals and other immune boosts, the fully vegetarian snack contains healthy levels of protein and can help balance the thyroid and supercharge its iodine content. Food innovation organisations have exploded with new ideas at the discovery, and soon kale-avoiders could’ve just found the next big thing. Iceland, regions of Ireland and Scandinavia have already adopted the new sea vegetable, and the US and Britain have yet to follow.
PART V: The “truth” and NTS NEWS’s ending statement
Whilst the kale controversy remains wholly divided with strong arguments on both sides, the conclusion that many have compromised to is that perhaps both sides are correct in some ways. It has been scientifically proven that kale is bursting with many hugely beneficial qualities, and it’s also been scientifically proven that certain metals, like Thallium, and substances, like goitrogens (affecting the thyroid system), have been found specifically in kale and could be increasingly harmful.
Some people have found that their immune system is especially skilled at detecting harmful toxins much sooner and they usually report that kale gives instant stomach aches, nausea, bloating and other conditions. This doesn’t necessarily mean their immune system is stronger or weaker, but rather their bodies function in a different way.
On the contrary, some people manage to reap the rewards of kale, like all of the positive vitamins and minerals, and the toxins are later flushed out. To our original question, superfood or super-poison? The answer is, a bit of both. Too much kale can lead to immune disorders, but in proportion kale can be a huge source of healthy vitamin.
If you have any further questions or statements that you would like to make, feel free to utilise the comments area below to discuss more on the wide speculation around kale.
Thanks for reading! Enjoy your day :)
Image sources: NTS Design & Graphics Studio (headlines from Delish, Business Insider) Oregon State University, The Instant Message Store, Plant Village, Verywell Fit
Research Sources: FirstWatch, Food Revolution Network, Seaweeds of Alaska, Delish, Business Insider, AlgaeBase, Atlas of the Future, Vukoo Nutrition, HelloFresh Blog, The Guardian, Healthline, Institute for Integrative Nutrition, WBUR, Well+Good, EMC Healthcare, The Bold Italic, Simply Health, Mayo Clinic Health System, BBC Good Food & Roots For Life.
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We'd love to hear about your experience with kale! Leave how you view kale in the comments section.
Super insightful article, as always. I eat kale every day, but after reading it, I might reconsider how often I add it to my diet.