Calories In Cabbage
Are There Many Calories In Cabbage?
You could almost count the number of calories in cabbage on your fingers, given a measuring cup full of the vegetable. Almost, but not quite. A cup of cabbage would contain about 22 calories. Since cabbage is a very nutritious vegetable, one might suspect it would be a good choice to build a diet around. When you have a food that is nutritious, has few calories, and is filling, it's difficult to think of a better way to keep well fed, eat healthy, and still lose weight.
Because of the low number of calories in cabbage, a cabbage-based diet will indeed lead to rapid weight loss, although it must of course be supplemented by other appropriate food items. There are a number of different ways to prepare cabbage. However, a specially prepared cabbage soup is often chosen as the main dish in a cabbage-based diet. Most of us would likely not tolerate a meal based on cooked cabbage for 8 to 10 days. That is the length of time normally devoted to a cabbage diet. Even cabbage soup might be a little hard to take day after day. The problem is resolved by adding other vegetables to the soup, usually green onions and carrots, with plenty of seasoning.
You can only eat so many cups of cabbage in one day, or at one sitting. You can't really eat nearly enough to provide the calories you need just to get by, no matter how much you might like cabbage. The cabbage soup diet is therefore supplemented with other foods, including meat, fish and poultry. The objective is for the meal as a whole to remain low in calories, but provide enough calories, and nutrients, to maintain your health.
In planning a diet, nutrition is every bit as important to take into account as is the number of calories, more so in fact. Once you're aware of the nutrients provided per serving of cabbage, you can select the accompanying foods, thereby making certain your daily requirements for vitamins, minerals and fiber will be met.
Cabbage is an excellent source of vitamin C, and a good source of vitamins A, B, and E as well. It contains no cholesterol, and is very low in saturated fat. Cabbage is very high in dietary fiber, calcium and iron. And, as is the case with most vegetables, it is high in those trace minerals essential to our health and well being. Specifically, cabbage is high in manganese, phosphorus, magnesium, and potassium, and is a good source of thiamine as well.
The low calories in cabbage, when supplemented with other vegetables, and a few meat or dairy products for protein, can be a very healthy diet indeed. Just remember, when you've finished your cabbage diet, to plan future meals accordingly, so you won't put the weight right back on.