Celery – Avoultra

The Incredible Health Benefits of Celery

A Quick Background on Celery

Celery is both crunchy and versatile and might be underrated as a food, as a vegetable, and even as a snack. Many know it from the childhood snack “ants on a log” (peanut butter spread into a celery stalk with raisins placed on top) or diced up and added to a tuna salad or sandwich to give it a little crunch, while others use celery as a base for soups and stocks- (1).

The celery that we know of today has been cultivated and is a descendant of wild celery. It is also a relative of some other versatile vegetables in the Apiaceae family including fennel, parsley, and parsnips- (2).

Celery’s origin can be traced back to the Mediterranean, Anatolia (sometimes referred to as “Asia Minor”), the Himalayan mountains, and the Caucasus region that straddles Europe and Asia- (3). Perhaps celery has originated in these areas due to celery having high water content; after all, celery requires fertile and organic soil- (4). The pascal variety is the kind of celery most often grown in the United States- (5).

Cultivating and Cooking with Celery

If you decide to grow celery yourself, know that celery thrives in cool weather. So if you live in a place that gets hot in the summer and cools in the winter, you’ll want to consider planting your celery in the fall. If you live far north in the Northern Hemisphere or far south in the Southern Hemisphere then you’ll want to plant your celery in the summer (when temperature changes from very cold to cool)- (6).

Celery seeds are quite small, so you might want to consider mixing them with some sand and then gently sprinkling them into your garden soil. The soil should be kept consistently moist and should be exposed to sunlight for about six hours each day- (7).

When cooking with celery, you will want to take advantage of all the benefits of its antioxidant properties. To do so, avoid boiling or blanching (when dipped in boiling water). The best method of cooking celery is steaming- (8), which allows it to retain 83% to 99% of its antioxidants- (9). Any kind of food without preservatives is not going to last a long time (this is a good thing), so you should know that raw celery can be refrigerated and still be good for up to seven days. Wrapping raw celery in aluminum foil can also help extend its life for up to two weeks- (10).

Historical Uses for Celery

Ayurvedic medicine has for many centuries used celery seed and celery to treat various ailments such as inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and gastric ulcer- (11).

In the annals of European history, celery was reported to be used as a kind of medicine as early as the 9th century. As part of the cuisine, in 1623, celery began to appear in various recipes (one of the more famous: mirepoix, which is a base for soup and consists, in part, of diced celery, carrots, and onions), but mostly just for flavoring purposes. It took another two hundred years, specifically in 1806, for colonists to bring celery to North America- (12).

In modern times, it has been known to be used as a diuretic, which, in turn, might be a great way to help treat colic- (13) (severe abdominal pain due to intestinal gas or obstruction). There have also been studies that have shown that eating celery is a very effective way of warding off mosquitoes- (14).

Health Benefits

Many people include celery as part of their weight management program because it is very low in calories- (15)—no more than sixteen ounces in a one-cup serving- (16). Some will even use celery to replace their favorite crispy and salty snack because it allows them to eat and gives them the crunch they’re looking for but without all the processed ingredients, calories, and trans fats.

What you might not know is that celery is rich in fiber, and this, then helps food move more quickly down your digestive tract which then lowers your risk for colon cancer- (17).

Celery is the gift that keeps on giving. It is also a very good source for flavonoids- (18) like lutein and zeaxanthin, which, putting it in layman’s terms, helps prevent or mitigate macular degeneration- (19). (the leading cause of vision loss due to the aging process of the human body).

Celery seeds also have some pretty incredible health benefits. There is a specific compound inside celery seeds (3-n-butyl phthalide) that have shown in some studies to help limit the rise of cholesterol levels- (20).

Celery has also been known to help aid in digestion, reduce blood pressure, relax one’s nerves, purify the bloodstream, and clear up skin problems- (21). Celery has a robust amount of organic sodium content that can dislodge calcium deposits from the joints and holds them until they can be eliminated from the kidneys- (22).

A few other nutritional facts about celery—in a 100 gram serving of raw celery, it contains .69 grams of protein, 449 IUs of Vitamin A, 40 mg of Calcium, 3.1 mgs of Vitamin C, and .20 mgs of Iron- (23).

Scientific Studies Showing the Health Benefits of Celery

According to a 2010 study at the University of Illinois, memory loss might be able to be managed with the addition of celery to one’s diet. The study was done on mice; tested on two-year-old mice by giving them Luteolin, which happens to be a nutrient in celery. Luteolin was then withheld from mice aged three to six months as part of this same study. Findings from this study showed that the usual brain inflammation and memory loss in two-year-old mice were not present. Additionally, these mice performed memory and learning tasks even better than the mice aged three to six months. Scientists believe their findings suggest that the luteolin in celery could reduce or eliminate age-related brain inflammation in humans and boost memory which would result in better cognitive health and wellness- (24).

References:

· 1 BBC Good Food, “Top 10 ways to use up leftover celery”

· 2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “List of plants in the family Apiaceae”

· 3, 12 Texas A&M, “Celery first used as a medicine”

· 4,6 The Old Farmer’s Almanac, “Growing celery”

· 5 “Common Varieties Of Celery: Different Kinds Of Celery Plants”

· 7 Gardening Know How, “Tips on how to grow celery”

· 8 Food Science and Technology, 2011 Jan;44(1):181-185

· 9 LWT - Food Science and Technology, Volume 44, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 181-185

· 10 Detroit Free Press, May 16, 2013

· 11 Prev Nutr Food Sci. 2018 Jun; 23(2): 127–133

· 13 J Evid Based Complementary Altern Med. 2017 Oct;22(4):1029-1034