It is hard to emphasize the importance of cruciferous vegetables to women going through hormonal change.
Let’s take a step back and reacquaint ourselves with what is happening inside our bodies…
As we move through peri-menopause, our chill and juicy hormones of progesterone and estrogen begin to deplete. This is not a smooth curve down to our ovaries retirement, but is full of spikes and crashes of hormone. We are living animals and the organs of our body do their utmost to function to the best of their ability. As they splutter to a halt our ovaries can gather the building blocks for manufacturing estrogen only to spurt an excessive amount into the bloodstream. We can go from zero to 60 from one week to the next and our health needs to be good enough to handle these changes so we experience the least amount of symptoms and can roll with them with grace.
The organ helping us out here is the liver. Our liver grabs excess hormone from the bloodstream and deconjugates, or breaks it down into compounds that can be easily removed from the body via our poop. The magical daily detox!
If you have constipation, you are going to have issues with feeling excessive symptoms of hormonal change.
If you do not like vegetables or fibre in your diet…think standard American diet where 95% of people are deficient in fibre, then you are going to experience excessive symptoms of hormonal change.
The food we eat changes our experience of menopause.
Cruciferous vegetables support us by offering the body fibre and a healthy serving of a compound called 3,3-Diindolylmethane. This is the compound that gives cruciferous vegetables their cabbagey smell. It also helps the liver in its process of breaking down hormone. You have the fibre for the poop and the fuel for grabbing and smashing up the hormones that are driving you crazy with symptoms.
Eating cruciferous veg regularly in your diet, throughout menopause means you have constant liver support, reduced constipation and a reduction in your hot flashes, mood swings, breast pain and bloat.
Cruciferous vegetables are all those in the cabbage family.
Think red and green cabbages, kale, cauliflower, collard greens, broccoli and Brussels sprouts.
We wouldn’t want to just eat boiled cabbage…that would be punishing! But this Cauliflower Salad with its burst of Middle Eastern flavour is something you are going to want to ladle onto our plate.
For this dish I roasted a stunningly beautiful, lime green, romanesco cauliflower but a regular white cauliflower or broccoli would be great too.
The roasted veg is paired with nuts, pomegranate seeds and the warming spice blend Baharat from Turkey. Think black pepper, cardamon, cloves, paprika and nutmeg.
The beauty of using nutrition as your first line of defence against menopausal symptoms is that as you nourish your body with these gorgeous crucifers, you are also protecting your heart health, preventing colon cancer and introducing an easily absorbed plant based source of calcium into your diet…as well as delighting your taste buds.
Ingredients
1 medium cauliflower or 1lb of broccoli
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
5 tbsp raw pistachios or hazelnuts
1/3rd cup pomegranate seeds fresh or frozen ( approx 1/2 a pomegranate)
2 sticks celery sliced on the diagonal
1/3rd cup roughly chopped parsley
1 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
1 tsp Baharat spice mix.
1/2 tsp sea salt
Instructions
Toss the cauliflower or broccoli in 2 tbsp of olive oil
Roast in the over a 400F /200C for 20 minutes.
Add the pistachios or hazelnuts for the last 5 minutes of roasting the cauliflower to toast them and bring out the flavour.
Meanwhile chop the celery and parsley and prepare the pomegranate seeds
In the bottom of a bowl whisk the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of Balsamic vinegar, the Baharat spice mix and the salt.
Add all of the ingredients to the bowl and toss in the dressing.
Serve with roasted chicken or salmon.