reachout said...
Tall Allen said...
The only supplement i would consider would be sulforaphane. Eating a raw broccoli floret with it may increase adsorption.
Allen, thanks so much. I realize you are not an MD but you sure do great research.
So I looked up sulforaphane and found some studies showing promise. Here is one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4390425/
Now, before going out and buying a bottle of sulforaphane extract, which I almost did, beware that it's not so easy. What is sold as sulforaphane extract is pretty useless, because this chemical has a shelf life of only hours. And it doesn't even occur by itself in broccoli, it is bound up with a sugar that has to be separated. What I'm going to do is buy fresh broccoli, cut it up, steam it for a few minutes (no more than 5) or boil it for no more than 1 minute, then prepare it with some olive or lemon juice. The freshness, chopping and timing is really important, otherwise you lose the ability to extract the sulforaphane when you eat it. Sorry if this sounds a little voodoo, but this is what I've been learning from reading several sources. If anyone has gone down this road I'd like to know how to best ingest sulforaphane.Sounds like you are on the right track of actually getting the sulforaphane out of the broc. It has it's own enzyme myrosinase which transforms the glucoraphanin into (or frees up) the sulforaphane. That enzyme is kicked into action when the broc is chewed or chopped. Unfortunately, the enzyme is destroyed by heat, so as you say steaming for more than a few minutes or boiling for more than a minute or so pretty much gets rid of the enzyme so you can not get the sulfo, the primary nutrient in the broc that we are trying to eat. And frozen broc is sometimes(usually?) blanched before freezing, so it is already somewhat damaged goods even if we don't cook it.
/www.cheatsheet.com/culture/foods-you-should-buy-frozen-instead-fresh.html/?a=viewall Somebody said...
Because manufacturers briefly blanch veggies, such as broccoli, before freezing, it’s actually partially cooked already.
OTOH, I have seen some sources saying steaming for a few minutes or boiling for one min(max) actually greatly increases the availability of the stuff we need.
However, all is not lost if the broc has been well cooked. The enzyme is readily available in a certain type of mustard powder(not sure if it is in all mustard powders? ) and other foods that can be combined with the broc:
news.aces.illinois.edu/news/illinois-scientists-put-cancer-fighting-power-back-frozen-broccoliSomebody said...
But they had previously had success using other food sources of myrosinase to boost broccoli’s health benefits. So the researchers decided to expose frozen broccoli to myrosinase from a related cruciferous vegetable.
When they sprinkled 0.25 percent of daikon radish—an amount that’s invisible to the eye and undetectable to our taste buds—on the frozen broccoli, the two compounds worked together to form sulforaphane, Dosz said.
“That means that companies can blanch and freeze broccoli, sprinkle it with a minute amount of radish, and sell a product that has the cancer-fighting component that it lacked before,” he said.
One question remained: Would sulforaphane survive the heat of microwave cooking? “We were delighted to find that the radish enzyme was heat stable enough to preserve broccoli’s health benefits even when it was cooked for 10 minutes at 120ºF. So you can cook frozen broccoli in the microwave and it will retain its cancer-fighting capabilities,” Dosz said.
Jeffery hopes that food processors will be eager to adopt this process so they can market frozen broccoli that has all of its original nutritional punch.
Until they do, she said that consumers can spice up their frozen, cooked broccoli with another food that contains myrosinase to bring the cancer-fighting super-food up to nutritional speed.
“Try teaming frozen broccoli with raw radishes, cabbage, arugula, watercress, horseradish, spicy mustard, or wasabi to give those bioactive compounds a boost,” she advised.