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Looking after your liver

Written by Staff Reporter

Thursday, 23 December 2010

With the Christmas social season in full swing, this is the time of year that people tend to be a little excessive! There are numerous Christmas catch ups and the usual Monday to Friday routine of eating gets thrown out the window. Also, with all of these social gatherings usually comes more and more alcohol. So how do we keep our livers going through all of this?

The liver is one of the main detox organs in the body, and so having a healthy liver is essential during December. The liver helps to break down alcohol to prevent it becoming too toxic for the body to cope with. Remember as well that the liver has many other jobs to do, so having a liver that is not functioning properly can also affect our overall health.

Not getting too technical, the liver actually has two main phases on detoxification and we need to support both phases to ensure toxins are being removed from the body. The food we eat over the next few weeks can actually assist the liver and support it in doing its job. Food that are good for liver detox include (I’m giving you just a few) green leafy vegetables such as broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts or cabbage, herbs and spices such as garlic, rosemary, cumin, coriander, caraway, dill, fennel and turmeric, as well as green tea and watercress.

I talked about protein last week and the amino acids that make up protein are essential for liver detox. In addition to this, B vitamins, along with filling the diet with fibre and anti-oxidants in the form of fresh fruit and vegetables, will also help.

The recipe below can be served as a side for a main meal and contains loads of liver helping foods!

Tasty Kale

¼ teaspoon ground cumin seeds
¼ teaspoon ground coriander seeds
¼ teaspoon of turmeric
1 clove of garlic - crushed
1 small bag or 150g of Kale – destalked and finely chopped
Squeeze of lemon juice
Sea salt and black pepper

Place the ground seeds in a saucepan with a little water and heat gently.
Add the crushed garlic and continue to stir for a few minutes. Turn up heat to medium/high.
Add the kale and stir well. Cover and cook for a few minutes, stirring every half minute or so.
Season with a little salt, pepper and lemon juice. Serve straight away.

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