Eating broccoli and Brussels sprouts lowers risk of heart attack or stroke. Here’s a delicious recipe to get them in your diet
- Maintaining blood vessel health becomes increasingly important as we grow older. Eating cruciferous vegetables – including kale and bok choy – regularly helps
- Forget the overcooked, mushy servings of broccoli and sprouts you may have had as a child – there are great ways to prepare them, a chef and restaurateur says
Broccoli and Brussels sprouts are among Christian Mongendre’s favourite vegetables, but the Hong Kong-born chef, who owns Treehouse.eco, a vegetarian and vegan restaurant in the city’s Central district, understands why some people turn their noses up at them.
“They may not look at these vegetables as interesting or exciting. When they were young they might have been forced to eat overcooked, mushy broccoli and Brussels sprouts, so now as adults they remember these veggies as looking unappetising and tasting even worse,” Mongendre says.
“These vegetables are probably an acquired taste, but the only way around this is to eat more of them,” he says. “The more often you consume them, the more you fine-tune your palate to enjoy their natural sweetness and earthiness.”
There’s another good reason to develop a taste for broccoli and Brussels sprouts. We know they have potential cancer-fighting benefits, thanks to their high antioxidant content, but research published in August 2020 in the British Journal of Nutrition found that eating more cruciferous vegetables is associated with less extensive blood vessel disease in older women.