Last week of our Halloween series! Remember I promised you something cabbage-tastic? Well, I hope you’ve stocked up on Brassica vegetables (formerly known as cruciferous vegetables) for the winter, because after reading this article, you may look at them in a whole new light…
Brassicas are vegetables from the cabbage family, including broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, radishes, mustard greens… They’re everywhere in our Quebec gardens, and for good reason: our cool climate suits them perfectly! Except that… no one has told you what they really contain, have they? Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve never seen anyone warn against cabbage. On the contrary, I hear more and more about the cabbage diet! Good idea or bad idea?
Let’s make way for our favourite clown for his LAST act of the season…
Come closer, come closer, my dear organic gardeners and green smoothie lovers! It’s me, Dreadbak Gardnoir, with a FINAL show that will make you reconsider your next diet!
Did you think spinach was bad? That green tomatoes were treacherous? Wait until you see what the ENTIRE Brassicaceae family has in store for you! Because YES, my fellow gardeners, all those beautiful “super-healthy” vegetables you grow so lovingly contain GOITROGENS!
Goitro-WHAT? Substances that ATTACK your thyroid gland! That little butterfly-shaped gland in your neck controls EVERYTHING in your body: your metabolism, your temperature, your heart rate, your weight, your mood… EVERYTHING! And your adorable cabbages can completely MESS IT UP! Krrrh-hihi-HIK!
When Your Kale Becomes the Conductor
Imagine your thyroid as the conductor of your body. It directs all the organs, coordinates everything, keeps everything in harmony… Now imagine someone coming along and monopolising the conductor’s attention, constantly distracting him and preventing him from doing his job. That’s exactly what your broccoli is doing!
Do you know what a goitre is, my dear brassica-loving gardeners? It’s when your thyroid – desperate, panicked – starts to SWELL like a balloon in an attempt to compensate. But it’s not just a question of aesthetics, oh no! It’s a sign that your conductor is losing control!
Without a functional thyroid, your body is in total chaos: your heart slows down dangerously, your body temperature drops, your organs race or shut down… It’s like a concert where every musician is playing their own part at the same time, Krrrh-hihi-HIK!
And how do these sneaky bok choy do that? They contain substances called goitrogens that FIGHT with iodine to get into your thyroid! Imagine a queue to get into a theatre: iodine is trying to get in nicely to listen to the orchestra, but the goitrogens are elbowing their way in and taking up all the space in the hall… and then distracting the conductor.
Without iodine, your thyroid can no longer orchestrate the creation of the hormones necessary for the body to function properly. And then it’s complete chaos in the theatre!
Cabbage Diets: When Trends Claim Victims
Speaking of drama, have you heard of those famous “cabbage diets”? The ones that promise you’ll lose 10 pounds in a week by eating ONLY cabbage?
Well, let me tell you what REALLY happens! I know someone who knows someone who tried this adventure… One month of cabbage soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And do you know what happened to them? Their thyroid went completely haywire! Extreme fatigue, paradoxical weight gain, hair falling out in handfuls, depression… The conductor threw down their baton and left the stage, Krrrh-hihi-HIK!
But that’s NOTHING compared to the extreme cases…
The Case That Sends Shivers Down Your Spine
Want to hear a real horror story, my little cauliflowers? Hold on to your Brussels sprouts! This story was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine!
An 88-year-old Chinese lady, believing she was doing the right thing for her diabetes, ate between 1 and 1.5 KILOGRAMS of RAW bok choy EVERY DAY for MONTHS! Yes, you heard right: over a kilo! That’s like eating 14 to 21 CUPS of raw vegetables every day!
We remember the spinach case, right? So what happened in the cabbage case? Oh dear, she arrived at the hospital lethargic, unable to walk or swallow! Her tongue was HUGE and thickened. Her eyes were swollen, her skin dry and rough…
The doctors measured her TSH – the hormone that stimulates the thyroid – and HORROR! It was 74.4! The normal range is between 0.4 and 4! Her body was trying with all its might to get her thyroid to function, but it was too busy dealing with all those goitrogens to respond.
The result? Coma, intubation, intensive care! This is the only documented case in all of modern medical literature of severe hypothyroidism caused by cruciferous vegetables, but what a case!
But aside from this extreme story, how many people have gone on cabbage diets without ending up in hospital? How many have simply consulted their doctor for unexplained fatigue, hair loss, or sudden depression? These cases don’t make the medical headlines, but they do exist, Krrrh-hihi-HIK!
Symptoms That Make Your Blood Run Cold
Want to know what actually happens when your thyroid stops working? Brace yourself, it’s not pretty!
First, hypothermia – your body temperature drops below 35°C (95°F)! You become as cold as a radish in a fridge! Then your heart slows down dangerously. Less than 44 beats per minute, and that’s a bad sign!
Next, your skin becomes dry and thick, your hair brittle… You develop oedema everywhere! Your eyelids swell, your legs swell… And your tongue swells so much that you can no longer speak or swallow!
In extreme cases – and this is no laughing matter – confusion, psychosis, delirium… Respiratory arrest, cardiac arrest… And DEATH!
The thyroid is a fragile organ, so don’t mess with it! It’s so fragile, so easy to tip it one way or the other… Just like me, on this tightrope above your heads… HEY! I’m up here! I’m going to do my TIGHTROPE WALKING act!
Watch me walk… Broccoli in my left hand, cauliflower in my right! Careful, I’m wobbling! It must be that treacherous broccoli throwing me off balance, Krrrh-hihi-HIK!
Come to think of it, not all cruciferous vegetables are created equal! Russian kale, for example, has a much higher concentration of goitrogens than Chinese cabbage. Some cabbages have 150 times more of these nasty molecules than others!
Phew! That crossing was a work of art! Did you see that? Dreadback knows how to handle cabbages with skill!
The Big Final Reveal!
Do you know what happened in a serious scientific study? Volunteers ate 150 grams of COOKED Brussels sprouts every day for four weeks. And guess what? There was NO effect on their thyroid! Zero! Nada! Nothing!
Why? Because COOKING deactivates myrosinase by 67 to 90%! Just 5 minutes of steaming and your goitrogens melt away like snow in the sun! POOF! That’s probably why the cabbage soup diet isn’t getting SO much attention…!
The Epilogue to the Halloween 2025 Series
So there you have it, my fellow gardeners! Want to know what’s really funny – and by funny, I mean completely ABSURD?
Throughout this series, I’ve been talking about toxins that SCARE a lot of people on the internet. Cyanide in apple seeds. Oxalic acid in spinach. Tomatine in green tomatoes. These are all toxins present in microscopic doses. And yet, people warn others, share alarmist articles, and create collective fears about these vegetables (and many others). I could have talked about beans, Jerusalem artichokes, fiddleheads… And it all comes down to the same thing…
But cabbage? OH NO! Cabbage, on the contrary, is ENCOURAGED! “Go on the cabbage diet!” It’s a MIRACLE DIET! Influencers are promoting it! Health blogs give you recipes for kale and rocket smoothies to drink three times a day (nothing to do with Marilou here)!
And THAT ONE, that toxin, can REALLY damage your health! A month of undercooked cabbage soup and your thyroid is shot! A few months of daily green smoothies with raw kale and you’ll find yourself at the doctor’s with strange symptoms.
It’s the complete OPPOSITE of other toxins! We demonise what is harmless and celebrate what is truly dangerous! The irony is as heavy as a pile of cabbage, Krrrh-hihi-HIK!
Disinformation, the Most Dangerous Toxin
Here’s the REAL lesson, my friends: Stop worrying about harmless toxins while gobbling down absurd amounts of raw Brassica vegetables because some influencer told you to! The most dangerous toxin, my little cabbages, is misinformation.
Dreadbak Gardnoir now takes his leave! I hope this series has taught you one important thing: poison is not in the food, it’s in the DOSE.
Happy Halloween and happy winter gardening, my friends. And above all… use your common sense! It’s free and it won’t give you a goitre, Krrrh-hihi-HIK!
lucky for me, I don’t eat any of those little demons.
Well who knew? Good thing I like my brassicas cooked. Great series Audrey.
Gardeners really are a down to earth group ! Very pertinent advice for our times and everything in moderation !