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Cabbage - Health Benefits of Cabbage Diet

Botanical Name: Brassica oleracea

Family Name : Cruciferae

Cabbage is a hardy vegetable that grows especially well in fertile soils. There are various shades of green available, as well as red or purple types. Head shape varies from the standard round to flattened or pointed. Most varieties have smooth leaves, but the Savoy types have crinkly textured leaves.

Cabbage is among the important vegetables. It is grown almost all over the world. It is an excellent muscle builder and cleanser. It differs in shape, size and color depending on the climate the area where it is grown.

Origin and Distribution

Its cultivation is known from ancient times and it originated in Europe. It was regarded as an important vegetable by Greeks and Romans. The major areas of cultivation are northern India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South America, Africa & Philippines.

Properties of cabbage

Bitter, stomachic, cardiotonic, antigout, anti-rheumatic, diuretic, laxative, anthelmintic.

Forms of Use :- As salad, as vegetable and in the form of juice.

Food Value of cabbage

Cabbage is valued for its mineral, vitamins content and alkaline nature. It is also used as salad and eating it raw is much more beneficial than cooking in which useful nutrients are almost minimized or lost. The raw cabbage is also easily digestible than the cooked one (longer it is cooked, less digestible it becomes).

Analysis of cabbage gives the following composition:

Cabbage Diet : Medicinal Uses & benefits

1. It possesses valuable property of having sulphur, chlorine and iodine contents. The combination of sulphur and chlorine causes a cleaning of the mucus membranes of the stomach and the intestinal tract. But this only applies when cabbage or its juice is taken in raw and that too without salt.
2. Avoid excess intake of cabbage or its juice. Normal use is recommend as its excessive consumption may cause thyroid disease called goitre.
3. Normal amount of cabbage or its juice naturally treats infections, ulcers and other disorders of the digestive system.
4. Cabbage clears constipation as it is full of roughage i.e. indigestible material which is necessary to activate intestine for proper action of the bowels. A meal of raw cabbage is a remedy for obstinate constipation.
5. In stomach ulcers/duodenal ulcers, drink cabbage juice for miraculous results. Raw cabbage juice was accepted as ulcer healer some three decades back as it contains the anti-ulcer factor, vitamin U. This vitamin is destroyed by cooking. Doses are 80 to 180 gm juice three times daily after meals/breakfast. To make cabbage juice more palatable other juices of tomato/pineapple/citrus juice may be added. If one does not have a juicer or blender, one can eat it like salad 4/5 times daily.
6. It is also used in skin disorders. Cabbage leaves are used in the form of compresses in healing ulcers, infected sores, blisters and skin eruptions, including psoriasis. They are also valuable in burns and carbuncles.
7. It arrests premature ageing. Research has shown that cabbage contains several elements and factors which increase the immunity of the human body and prevent rapid ageing. It also contains vitamins P and C which give strength to the blood vessels and keep infections at bay.
8. Cabbage soup itself has fat burning properties.
9. Prepare a paste of leaves. Place it over the site of swelling to get relief from gout.
10. Leaf juice or vegetable prepared from it, if taken regularly, is proved to be cancer preventive. The sulphur and amino acid histidine present in the leaf, check the growth of tumours and keep body cells normal.