Juicing Kale vs Collard Greens

This is the huge pile of collard greens I bought today for less than $3.00.  I usually only get between 4 and 5 leaves of kale for $1.69 so this seemed like great deal...then I thought I better do some research on it.

Everyday I go to the grocery store to get my fix of Kale, and each day I could see the same few bunches dwindle down after I took my bunch from the bin. Yesterday I took the best of the last two bunches as the other bunch was only a couple of tiny little leaves, very puny.  And today, that was the only choice so I thought I would go to another store to check out their supply.

When I got there they didn't even carry the leafy green goodness, they only had the bags of kale that are prewashed and cut into bite size pieces which is great for eating, but horrible for the juicer.

They did have a ton of collard greens and they seem to be so cheap, I could get a huge bunch of the green stuff for less than $3.00 so I thought, well it is green and leafy I will give it a try.

I purchased it and took it home and washed it up and juiced it and it turned out great. The taste was good and it worked great in the juicer so I thought WOW I am really on to something here. Then I wondered why I don't hear any thing about collard greens so I decided to do a bit of research before I got too excited and here is what I found out about the two greens.

I can't seem to find anything negative about the kale other than it is high in vitamin K.  For the collard greens though there were a couple of negatives. It too is high in Vitamin K, but in addition, it is high in oxalic acid which could be an issue for people suffering from oxalate kidney stones. As it turns out, spinich is also high in oxalic acid. The other issue is that the collard greens may contain goitrogens which may cause swelling of the thyroid gland insome people. 

So the bottom line for me is since I don't know enough about this oxalic acid and kidney stones and the possible issue with the thyroid, I am going to stick to the kale for now with no negative issues to report.

I hope you find this helpful and are juicing to your health!