By Jane Black
As a reporter and columnist for the Washington Post, New York Times, Slate, and New York magazine, Brooklyn-based Jane Black dives into issues of food politics, sustainability, and the vagaries of foodie trends. Who better to explicate how 2013 became the Year of Kale?
Had you been a foodie at the dawn of the twentieth century—though, of course, no one would have called you a foodie then—you very likely would have followed the teachings of Horace Fletcher. A wealthy businessman, who lived in a grand thirteenth-century palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal, Fletcher was neither a scientist nor a chef. Nonetheless, his prescription to chew each bite 32 times, a technique soon dubbed “Fletcherizing,” was widely accepted as a key to good health. “Nature will castigate those who don’t masticate!” he warned. His adherents, who today might be called celebrity endorsers, included John D. Rockefeller, Henry James and U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Leonard Wood.
The concept, of course, seems ridiculous today. But each food fad is a reflection of its age. Fletcher, who also advocated more sensible practices such as eating less meat and only eating when hungry, was keen to cure upper-class ills such as gout and dyspepsia. More recently, doctors have prescribed low-fat, low-carb and vegan diets (to curb obesity), while chefs have brought us nose-to-tail eating (to save the planet), Korean tacos (to redeem fusion food), and cupcakes (ostensibly to promote equal parts nostalgia and portion control).
And now, we have kale: glamorous but respected; sexy but not in a cookie-cutter way. The Cate Blanchett of vegetables. Like any starlet that has hit the big time, kale is everywhere. It has bumped romaine out of Caesar salads. It curls across pizzas and alongside locally raised pork chops. It’s the muse for 50 Shades of Kale, a cookbook and love letter too. “I hold her leaves in my hands,” writes author Drew Ramsey. “Her fine, iridescent dust glimmers. I am invincible. Immortal. Potent.” It is even the inspiration for American Kristen Beddard’s crusade to enlighten the French who, despite their claims of gastronomic superiority, remain oblivious to kale’s appeal.
Why kale? The question echoes across the blogosphere. But kale’s powerful allure on this side of the Atlantic is hardly a mystery. While most trendy foods appeal to only one camp of obsessives—acai is for health nuts; bacon is for food fashionistas—this most humble member of the cruciferous family is a crossover act: a uniter not a divider.
To the fashionistas, kale is the poster child of the chic farm-to-table movement. Led by chefs such as Alice Waters and author Michael Pollan, its adherents prize “authenticity” and yearn for a simpler, more connected way of life. To its credit, kale has a vibrant history. It was farmed in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. By the Middle Ages, it had become so popular in England and Scotland that the word actually meant “dinner,” just as “tea” did later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During World War II, Britain urged home gardeners to grow kale for its “Dig for Victory” campaign, a historical moment that prompted New York magazine to cheekily note that “kale did its part in the defeat of fascism.”
But more important, kale offers to those who cook it a badge of honor. Sure, they could buy foie gras or truffles. But that would be too obvious—too “one percent.”
To make something delicious out of kale demonstrates pluck, a trait prized by those who also raise chickens out back. Rightly or wrongly, it also signals a cook’s commitment to farm-to-table values, like buying local and, of course, eating your vegetables.
That kale is versatile is another plus. Kale salads have a monopoly on trendy restaurant menus and the charity circuit. But kale can be eaten raw, steamed, sautéed, baked or deep-fried. Cooks can present it “authentically” with white beans and sausage or, creatively, as cornmeal and kale spoon bread. In 50 Shades of Kale there are recipes for kung pao kale, kalejitos with rum, lime and mint, and chocolate-kale fudge pops. (Perhaps 25 shades would have been enough.)
Healthy eaters, in turn, love kale for its nutrient density.
One cup of kale has just 33 calories but packs nearly 700% of the recommended daily dose of vitamin K, more than 200% of vitamin A and 134% of vitamin C. Plus it’s got so much iron that some are calling it the “new beef.” A salad of kale, avocado and quinoa—today’s trendiest grain—is hard to beat. No wonder it’s the most popular item on salad bars at Google’s corporate offices.
With every fad, though, comes the inevitable backlash. Curiously, the first attacks have been lobbed, not at kale’s pretensions of grandeur, but at its health credentials. Writing in the Huffington Post, the respected author Nina Planck argued that raw kale—even baby leaves—are too tough to chew. Moreover, cooking it—and cooking it with fat—is what gives kale its superior nutrition.
Like all crucifers, kale, Planck explains, contains high concentrations of a family of toxins called oxalates, which interrupt the absorption of potassium and calcium. You need heat to destroy oxalates. Meanwhile, the vitamin A in kale is in fact beta-carotene, which the body must convert to a useable form in the presence of fat. Likewise, calcium is best absorbed with fat, saturated fat in particular. “That’s the nutritional wisdom behind the pairing of greens and ham in the American South,” Planck concludes.
Such a critique is worthy. And it could do kale’s stellar reputation some damage. America is a country built on immigration and, as such, it lacks the deeply rooted food cultures of countries like France, Italy and China. That, combined with the peculiarly American belief that what is new is always better, dooms us to lurch manically from one culinary fad to another. Before kale was the “it” vegetable, sundried tomatoes, arugula, portobello mushrooms and celery root each wore the crown.
Still, the backlash, such as it is, isn’t changing people’s minds about kale yet. There’s a petition on Change.org to make the first Wednesday of October National Kale Day (though to date it has fewer than 700 signatures). Vermont folk artist Bo Muller-Moore is locked in a trademark battle with fast-food giant Chick-fil-A to allow him to keep selling T-shirts that read: “Eat More Kale.” If the ubiquitous raw kale salad proves not to live up to its nutritious and culinary promise, perhaps the solution is to mix and match culinary fads. Anyone ready to Fletcherize?