The 5 things nobody ever tells you about kale

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It seems all anyone can talk about these days is kale. Poor quinoa must be sitting in the corner in floods of protein-rich tears remembering when all Gwyneth Paltrow’s recipes had it as the star ingredient (no one likes being ‘consciously uncoupled’ from Gwyneth).

When I first heard about this ‘miracle vegetable’, I was ready to motorboat a bunch of the stuff immediately! I raced to the shops, (averting my adulterous eyes from the silverbeet I’d been having a culinary romance with for years), grabbed a bunch of the vegetable de jour and prepared my body for its date with nutritional perfection…

Three meals in, however, I was starting to realise I’d made a terrible mistake.

So here I am, out on a cruciferous limb, anticipating the hate I’ll get (especially from Kevin Bacon) for saying: I don’t reckon kale is all it’s cracked up to be. And this is why…

1. Fibre is good - just not that much of it

After my third kale-laden stir-fry I was wondering whether I’d accidentally slipped a batch of roofing insulation in with the carrots. I’m pretty sure none of the health bloggers mentioned in their endless ‘kale is so perfect you’ll want to have babies with it’ commentary that ‘after you eat it you’ll feel like you’ve swallowed a pillow’.

Naturally I assumed the issue was my (lack of) culinary skills, so I tried a few different cooking methods and every time: concrete guts. Then I moved to juicing and a couple of days later this article pops up online…

I mentioned these issues to a nutritionist and she said (like this was common knowledge) ‘oh, you can't eat kale every day!’ Which leads me to my next gripe…

2. You can’t eat kale every day

If you don’t think I should have a daily Mars Bar, I’ll give you a high five. Reckon smashing a burrito seven days a week isn’t the best idea? You’re muchos smart, mi amigo!

But telling me I have to back off on the kale? I have a couple of problems with this: a) It’s a vegetable and b) It’s sold by the shrub. What am I supposed to do, use it for one meal and put the rest in a vase? None of the other vegetables in my crisper drawer are dishing out the ‘eat us more than once at your intestinal peril!’ demands and then holding my poop hostage.

I already carry a litre of chlorophyll around with me everywhere I go, if I start telling my friends I now only eat vegetables in moderation, no one will want to hang out with me!

3. You need to drink a lot of water to deal with the high fibre content

I polish off at least 2-3litres of water a day. Any more and my internal organs will be crying out for a life vest. Sorry kale, either you make your way through my digestive system on the river I’m currently providing, or I don’t want you in the boat in the first place.

4. I am not willing to give a vegetable a ‘happy ending’

When I was trying to work out whether my culinary skills were the source of my problems, I came across an article that suggested, if you want kale to digest properly, you have to massage it. Now, I love vegetables a lot - some would say too much - but not even I am willing to crank up the Barry White and start whipping out the culinary foreplay. Massages are for blokes who get their courting advice from pornos, not for women who want to make a salad.

5. Kale chips

The way the bloggin' community was going on about these things, I thought I’d be re-enacting When Harry Met Sally with one bite:

But after rubbing those leaves with oil and salt (dammit, they did get a massage) and baking them in the oven, I put the first ‘chip’ in my mouth and was left, not only with the underwhelming taste of disappointment on my tongue, but with a floor covered in green dust. I’ve seen loaves of gluten-free bread hold together better. If I invited mates around for a movie night and served up a bowl of these structurally unsound snacks, they’d throw them right back in my face (which wouldn’t be a problem seeing as they’d turn to dust before they had a chance to hit me anyway).

So I’m sorry kale. It’s over. You promised so much and delivered so little and now I have to work out how to get back into silverbeet’s good books. Actually….I’ve got a vase full of kale here, I wonder if it’d like that?

This post originally appeared on The Allergy Kid and has been republished with permission.

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