Whether you’re looking to improve digestion, boost your antioxidant intake, or want a highly effective way to positively affect nearly every system in your body, boosting sulforaphane is a great place to start.
Best example? Sulforaphane (try saying it five times faster!), a powerful nutrient, is highly recommended by a board-certified gastroenterologist, gut health expert, and best-selling author Will Bulsiewicz, MD. We asked him about the ways sulforaphane benefits our health, why it’s so important to prioritize in our diets, and the best ways to incorporate more of it in our meals.
The Many Ways Sulforaphane Benefits Your Health
“Sulforaphane is a phytochemical, a nutrient that is found exclusively in plants,” in this case, exclusively in cruciferous vegetables. That means you’ll find it in broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and certain dark leafy greens.
“We have long known that cruciferous vegetables have health benefits, including a reduced risk of cancer and other chronic diseases, and laboratory studies suggest that sulforaphane may play an important role in the cancer-protective properties of these foods.
How much sulforaphane should we be consuming each day?
Unlike many vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients, there are no recommended daily intakes (RDAs) or adequate intakes (AIs) recommended by the National Institutes of Health. Instead, it’s much easier to focus on maximizing your intake of cruciferous vegetables on a regular basis. Even starts his day with a good dose of sulforaphane in the form of broccoli sprouts, which he says has 50-100 times more nutrients than ripe broccoli on the stem.
“I start every morning with a smoothie topped with lots of broccoli sprouts”. “You’ll know when you push the sprouts hard because you’ll taste the bitterness. Embrace it; it’s good for you!
Another easy way to increase your intake is to prioritize sulforaphane-rich leafy greens in salads over lettuce. Whenever possible, he adds kale, arugula and/or kale to his daily lunch salad. Plus, one of his favorite kitchen secrets is a technique he calls the “cut and stop” technique. More sulforaphane can be produced in cruciferous vegetables when you chew them thoroughly or chop them at least a few minutes before cooking, Dr. Bulsiewicz explains. Whenever he uses these vegetables in a recipe, he chops them up, walks away for 10 minutes, and reacts chemically before cooking to best preserve their sulforaphane power.
“The ideal way to get sulforaphane is through your diet,”. “The reason is that the evidence strongly supports eating whole cruciferous vegetables, which will provide sulforaphane, but also fiber, polyphenols, vitamins, minerals, and even protein and healthy fats. We cannot say with confidence that sulforaphane, when obtained from All of these other nutrients work in the same way when removed. With this in mind, we should strive to consume more of these health-promoting vegetables.
Whether you’re looking to improve digestion, boost your antioxidant intake, or want a highly effective way to positively affect nearly every system in your body, boosting sulforaphane is a great place to start. It’s also easier than ever to do, thanks to the growing popularity of broccoli sprouts, high-quality supplements, and of course, Dr. Bulsiewicz’s “chop and stop” technique for turning your daily grocery Become a superhero.
