Can You Eat Cabbage On Your Low Carb Diet?

How Many Carbs in Cabbage? Is Cabbage Low-Carb? Oh Yeah!

What’s low-carb, tasty, versatile, seriously nutritious, & always among the cheapest vegetables in your grocery store? Cabbage!

Furthermore, cabbage is in season when summer vegetable prices skyrocket, so it’s even cheaper than usual right now. With the cost of lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, and other summer salad vegetables at their predictable winter high, cabbage makes a lot of sense.

What’s the lowdown on cabbage nutritionally? Are their many carbs in cabbage?

One cup of green cabbage has 3.8 grams of carbohydrate, with 1.6 grams of fiber, for a usable carb count of 2.2 grams, and just 17 calories. Cabbage is one of the best sources of the little-known vitamin K, needed for strong bones, blood clotting and proper kidney function. You’ll also get appreciable amounts of vitamin C and potassium, plus a smattering of other vitamins. Go for red cabbage and you’ll get more than pretty color–you’ll get all the vitamins above, plus roughly a day’s worth of vitamin A. (Okay, it’s not really vitamin A. It’s pro-vitamin A–stuff your body can turn into vitamin A. Actual vitamin A is only found in animal foods, one good reason for eating them.)

Just as exciting, many medical studies suggest that sulfur compounds found in vegetables in the cabbage family reduce cancer risk. I found studies citing reductions in breast, prostate, colon, even lung cancers. That’s too good to miss! (Just so you know–the other members of the family include broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, and kale. All low carb!)

What Can You Do With Nutritious Low-Carb Cabbage?

• Coleslaw is a favorite, but most commercial coleslaw dressing contains a lot of sugar. Mix ½ cup each of mayonnaise and sour cream or plain yogurt with 1½ tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 1½ tablespoons prepared mustard, 1-2 teaspoons of Splenda (or your sweetener of choice to equal 1-2 teaspoons sugar) and salt to taste. This is enough for a dozen servings of coleslaw, and will add about 1 gram of carb to each serving.
• Serving that slaw to company? Use red cabbage and stir in one grated carrot, and it will be almost too beautiful to eat. Add red cabbage to tossed salads for color and added nutrition.
• Cook red cabbage with a little acid–vinegar, lemon juice, or the like–or it turns blue!
• Napa cabbage, with its distinctive texture and mild flavor, is particularly good in stir fries, and cheaper than snow peas. Good for Asian-style salads, too.
• Cabbage is wonderful sauteed. Try frying a few slices of bacon and sauteing the cabbage in the resulting grease until it has a few brown spots. Then stir in a little vinegar and Splenda, and the bacon, crumbled, and serve.
• Corned beef and cabbage is about as easy as a supper can get. Peel a couple of onions and a few turnips, and cut them in chunks. Put ’em your slow cooker. Plunk your hunk of corned beef on top, add the seasoning packet that comes with it, and water to cover. Simmer on low all day–10 hours is good. Then turn the pot up to high, add coarsely chunked cabbage, recover, and cook for another half an hour. Serve with butter for the vegetables and mustard or horseradish for the beef.
• Don’t forget about bagged coleslaw mix. Of course you can use it for slaw and other salads, but it’s great for making quick cabbage soup, too.

Dana Carpender’s Low-Carb Unstuffed Cabbage Recipe

Stuffed cabbage is a perennial favorite, but it’s time consuming and labor intensive. Here’s a recipe that gives you all the flavor of stuffed cabbage at breakneck speed. Do use very lean ground beef for this recipe–it saves you the time needed to drain off the grease. Click the photo for the recipe.

Try these other CarbSmart low-carb cabbage recipes:

• Budget Low Carb – Beefy Comfort Food Perfect for St. Patrick’s Day or Any Day
• Red Cabbage with Bacon and Caraway Recipe
• Polish Sausage with Cabbage, Apples, and Caraway Seeds Low-Carb Recipe
• Roasted Chicken on a Bed of Roasted Cabbage Recipe
• Filet Of Hare In Savoy Cabbage
• Stir Fried Cabbage Recipe
• Asian Cole Slaw Recipe
• Lemon Garlic Chicken Slaw Recipe

© Dana Carpender. Used by permission of the author. What do you think? Please send Dana your comments to Dana Carpender.