Who doesn’t love chips, the salty and tasty snack for all kinds of situation and mood? People eat chips when hanging out with friends, people eat chips for celebration and even people eat chips when they have broken heart. However, the salty and tasty snacks like chips are rich of MSG and contain a lot of preservative which when consumed in long term may cause some serious health conditions.
Kale Chips for Your Healthy Snack
Not everyone knows that you could have tasty chips made from healthy ingredient like kale. Kale is green vegetable rich of antioxidants, essential vitamins and minerals. Kale is commonly consumed as veggies mixture in vegetable salad or vegetable soup. Not only tasty, there are a lot of health benefits of kale chips that may beneficial for your health and at the same time is fulfill your appetite of snacking.
Nutritional Values Contained in Kale Chips
Traditional kale chips were fried but if you want to avoid the excessive oil is better to bake it instead of fry it. Baked kale chips are lower in calories but still rich of fiber and carbohydrate. Just like the regular or fresh kale, kale chips are also rich of several vitamins and minerals such as vitamin C and vitamin K and then some iron, calcium and potassium. The list of health benefits of kale chips below will ensure you consuming this snack are not only tasty but also healthy.
- Kale Is Loaded with Powerful Antioxidants
Some studies stated that you could find some powerful antioxidants in kale chips such as quercetin and kaempferol. Furthermore, some carotenoid like lutein and zeaxanthin also found in kale chips.
- Excellent Source of Vitamin C
Among the vitamin C benefits are great for immunity and also able to optimize the absorption of minerals. Furthermore, vitamin C is also great for skin by optimizing the production of collagen.
- Lowers the Cholesterol Level
As rich of fiber, kale chips are well known as one of the foods that lower the cholesterol level. Furthermore, it is very tasty and also dense of nutrients.
- Reduces the Risk of Heart Diseases
Kale chips are excellent source of potassium and one of the health benefits of potassium is to promote healthy heart by eliminating the excessive amount of sodium in metabolism system.
- Excellent Source of Vitamin K
Though our body could produce our own vitamin K but it is better if you could make sure the daily intake is fulfilled. Kale chips are excellent source of vitamin K which along with calcium could promote healthy bones.
- Fights Cancer
It is a common knowledge that vegetable like kale is rich of antioxidants and this substance is the most excellent way to fight cancer caused by free radicals.
- Rich of Beta-Carotene
Just consuming baked kale chips you could enjoy all the health benefits of beta-carotene. As pro-vitamin A, bate-carotene is excellent for vision and able to improve human body metabolism.
- Sources of Essential Minerals
Kale chips are excellent source of essential minerals such as calcium, iron and magnesium. Kale chips are also great source of potassium and it is better if you make it without salt to avoid the increase level of sodium.
- Healthy Snack for Diabetic Patients
As mentioned in previous point, kale chips are excellent source of magnesium. Some studies stated that eating plenty of magnesium could help preventing certain types of diabetes and also excellent choice of snack for diabetic patients because it is low in calories and sodium.
- Lowers the Risk of Macular Degeneration Diseases
As rich loaded with powerful antioxidants and also rich of beta-carotene, consuming kale chips regularly could help lowering the risk of macular degeneration diseases commonly suffered by senior people.
- Excellent for Weight Loss
Kale is one of the highly recommended weight loss foods. It is low in calories but dense with nutrients. Moreover, eating kale chips will make you full longer to help controlling your appetite during weight loss diet.
- Improves Vision
There are two potent antioxidants found in kale chips that are beneficial to improve vision; they are lutein and zeaxanthin. Moreover, as pro-vitamin A, kale could help prevent cataract as well.
How to Serve Baked Kale Chips
From the list of health benefits of kale chips mentioned above, surely you want to add this healthy snack to your family but you have no idea how or where you should go to get it. Well homemade kale chips are the best option and how to serve it is not as difficult as you think.
- Strip the fresh and perfect kale leaves from the hard stems and then torn them to bite-sized pieces.
- Spread them in baking pan and then spray them with canola oil. Canola oil is low in fat so you could avoid the high level of saturated fat commonly found in regular cooking oil. If you don’t have canola oil you could use avocado oil or olive oil.
- For the coating, most people will love to add some salt for the salty or pepper for the spicy but what is the different of this kale chips with other salty chips. That is why instead of salt which is high in sodium, you could replace it with other seasonings such as cayenne pepper.
- Use paper towel to absorb the excessive oil and then you could serve the healthy baked kale chips to your family.
Baked kale chips are excellent choice of snack for your family. They are easy to make and super healthy. Furthermore, you could cut the extra expenses to buy snack because the price of fresh kale is much cheaper compared to packaged snacks. Moreover, when you make your own kale chips you could control the ingredients so you know really well what kind of snack you have been served to your family.