Kale, the trendy vegetable that we can't pronounce but came back to stay

How is a certain food imposed in the diet of the population? Do you eat what is available in each place? “In no way, food is a cultural convention”, the vegetable expert Mariano Winograd affirms with certainty, and gives some very clear examples: “Blood is everywhere, here we eat it like blood sausage, but in Japan it doesn’t even occur to them try it. There are ants everywhere, in Bucaramanga they are a delicacy, but here it is very unlikely that they will be sold to you in a market. society to incorporate kale into their diet. “Kale”, “kalé”, “keil” … there is not even consensus on how pronounce it , but everyone already has it on the radar. If we show it to any such grandmother, they will tell us that it is a cabbage, or bersa … some of the words that were used fifty years ago, before it began to lose prominence.

It is so life. Like the sea, trends come and go. This year, for example, the radicha trompito ended up disappearing from the local market, a product that no one demanded anymore, but perhaps in a few years someone will take some seeds out of a drawer and it will become fashionable again. That happened to kale, who knew how to be a staple in greengrocers many decades ago, then he disappeared from the map and is now on all the cards cool .

“We don’t know if it comes from the hand of vegans, yuppies, hippies, chefs … The truth is that it was forgotten And today it is in all the grocery stores. Is it because of fashion, is it because of snobbery, is it because of colonialism? They are cultural moves . For what is this? Simply to the human need for variation, “says Winograd, and he slides that for him, there is something of a snobbery. “It sounds like something you ate in a European city.”

Specifically, we are talking about a vegetable from the cabbage family. As the specialist explains, cabbage is “a headless cabbage.” “Surely it arrived from Europe 200 years ago, we do not really know how important it was, and then at the beginning of the century, when the great European immigration came, which is what supplies the city with food, it became something frequent ”, he says.

Kale is reputed to be very rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. What Winograd assures is that it is a “good, healthy, noble and easy to produce” product .

Lo que se consume del kale son las hojas, que se pueden preparar de diversas formas; crudas, cocidas al vapor, a la sartén o en el horno, como chips o para rellenar pastas.

What is consumed from kale are the leaves, which can be prepared in various ways; raw, steamed, pan-fried, or baked, as chips or to fill pasta.

It is grown in horticultural green belts near cities and thanks to new production technologies it is possible to have kale in all seasons. “In the middle of winter there are quinteros that put it under a greenhouse so that it is more protected from the elements and grows faster, and in the hottest moment of summer, those without irrigation surely do not.”

The contribution of science

To accompany increased consumption and production From science, it seeks to provide answers to the challenges by generating greater knowledge about the species. In this sense, the contribution being made by researchers from the Faculty of Agronomy of the UBA (Fauba), Conicet and the National University of La Plata (UNLP) is interesting, trying to determine the best practices for the Preservation of kale properties once harvested.

“Once harvested, leafy vegetables quickly start to lose color, visual appeal and nutrients. Kale, a vegetable relative to broccoli and cabbage, known for its high content of proteins, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, is not saved from this process “, explains Sebastián M. Tamashiro in a recent article on the site On Earth, from la Fauba, and adds that to find a solution to this problem, a joint study between Fauba, Conicet and UNLP found that cut kale leaves in the afternoon instead of in the morning , which is the usual harvest time, triples the time in which this ‘superfood’ retains its nutritional quality.

“From FAUBA we began to study kale ago more than five years, when some producers began to consult us about how to handle it, since many people were asking them for this vegetable, “says Emiliana Sánchez, professor at the Fauba Horticulture chair, in the article.

“What is consumed from kale are the leaves, which can be prepared in various ways; raw, steamed, pan-fried, or baked, as chips or to fill pasta. However, like other leafy vegetables, once we harvest them they begin to lose their nutritional properties . For this reason, it is essential to analyze what happens after harvesting them, understand how they degrade and find a way to increase the useful life of the food ”, explains Sánchez.

As it is known that the metabolism of plants changes throughout the day, the researchers tested whether the time of day the kale leaves were harvested changed the rate at which they lost properties, and found that it did. In the same batch, they cut leaves at three different times, at 8:00 am, 1:00 pm and 6:00 pm They placed them in plastic trays and left them at 20 ° C in the dark. Every three days, and until the ninth day, they measured from the yellowing of the leaves to the contents of chlorophyll, proteins, sugars and antioxidants.

El estudio mostró que cosechar a las 6:00 p. m. triplicó el tiempo que podían extenderse las distintas propiedades de las hojas de kale.

The study showed that harvesting at 6:00 pm tripled the time that the different properties of kale leaves could be extended.

According to Sánchez, the study showed that harvesting at 6:00 pm tripled the time that the different properties of kale leaves could be extended. “Even the leaves harvested at 6:00 pm only showed signs of degradation on the ninth day, while those that were harvested at 8:00 am were already yellow on the third day. The leaves harvested at six in the afternoon, in addition, presented higher levels of sugar and protein than those cut in the morning ”.

“In this sense, the researcher added that this study suggests that with a change in the harvest routine, a benefit can be achieved for producers, intermediaries and consumers. By receiving more hours of solar radiation during the day, the leaves continue to produce sugars and other compounds such as proteins or antioxidants, which allow them to maintain their quality for more days ”, concludes the SLT article.

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