Why you should eat your greens

And so much more, for the wild cabbage – and its many descendants – is associated with health, wealth, romance and more

- MARTYN BAGULEY

A hundred years ago in the wastes of Labrador, northern Canada, a 30-year-old fur trapper could have been seen during the freezing winter months filling large, wooden barrels with alternating layers of seawater and cabbage leaves. Because his wife desperately missed having fresh vegetables during the winter – and having noticed the native Inuit’s way of fast-freezing fish – he had applied their methods to cabbage and discovered that if fast-frozen, when thawed the leaves tasted exactly like fresh cabbage. Freezing food wasn’t new but much frozen food tasted mushy when thawed: the fur trapper had discovered that instant freezing was the answer. I’m sure you will recognise his name: Clarence Birdseye. He went on to make a fortune out of his idea.

The cabbage leaves he used in his early freezing experiments had travelled a long way through history. For thousands of years they had been evolving from the wild cabbage, Brassica oleracea (Brassica, Latin for a cabbage; oleracea, suitable for cooking).