Why Broccoli Is Superior
to Cauliflower

I love plants. They’re green, occasionally tall spots for shade, and sometimes you can pick fruits off of their leaves and climb through their branches. A single plant has the potential for hours of fun for children or years of food for people, and they’re vibrant and beautiful, especially when you see forests in California and sprawling landscapes full of them. It all starts with the green, the very thing that assigns beauty and life to these plants in the first place.

 

Now take away the green. You get brown grass, dead trees, withered flowers, and a complete eradication of a landscape's beauty. A relatively dull, ugly landscape that doesn’t encapsulate the same beauty as the luscious, green scenery from before.

 

And this follows suit with consumption. Animals prefer green grass over hay, and will only eat hay if the green grass is not available (usually during times of the year where rain is less prominent). Fresh grass contains Omega 3’s and other Vitamins, namely A and E, which are essential to some animals' cellular health and inflammatory responses. Hay, however, loses the potency of these benefits as the grass dries out, meaning that it’s not as healthy as grass is for these animals.

 

But the beauty of green extends beyond landscapes and pastures and, for our purposes, in the direction of the second greatest vegetable, broccoli, and its absolute inferior evolutionary family member, regular, white, not-genetically altered cauliflower.

 

Consider the case of these two vegetables that often find themselves side by side in the produce section. While both are nutritious, broccoli simply has more “raw nutritious power,” which it gets through its higher Vitamin C and K count and its presence of Vitamin A, something cauliflower regularly does not have. Sure, cauliflower has less calories than broccoli according to the USDA, with approximately a 0.1 calorie difference per gram between the two (~0.25 and ~0.35 respectively); however, with that difference in calories, you’re talking about a 10 calorie difference at 100 grams (or half a head of broccoli/cauliflower) at the cost of necessary Vitamins, namely Vitamin A.

 

Your body needs a diverse set of colors in order to absorb nutrients and interact with other parts of the body to provide health benefits. Green foods are known to help cleanse the body, and can fight against heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, and declining mental states. Without a diverse set of colors, your body’s health may not reach as high a potential as it has, and since regular cauliflower has no pigments of color in the head, your body is not receiving certain chemicals and antioxidants it needs to work with the rest of the body.

 

And cauliflower is a depressing food. It’s a broccoli devoid of its life, bland and boring but flavorful enough to leave a bad taste in your mouth. The body will likely struggle to enjoy it, since there’s no color, no beauty, no life within the food. 

 

Meanwhile, broccoli is green and vibrant, full of flavor and enjoyment. Throw some in a boiling pot with some noodles, beef, and carrots, and you have created a diversely-colored and flavorful dish. Broccoli demands attention and it is well deserved, as your body is met with health-related benefits and an enjoyable food all combined in one.

 

People naturally appeal to things with vibrancy and life, and foods are no exception. We eat with our eyes before anything, and regular cauliflower is a dull, boring white color as opposed to the vibrant, luscious green color found in broccoli. After, we eat with our hands, as texture is a large part of enjoying a food, and cauliflower’s bumpy texture is inferior to broccoli’s grainy, more satisfying one. Eventually, when we eat with our taste buds, we expect that our expectations be met, through satisfying texture, appeal, and smell, and cauliflower simply doesn’t provide that level of satisfaction.

 

Regular cauliflower is one of the worst standalone vegetables to eat. It provides little health benefits in comparison to broccoli aside from its lesser calories, which are a result of a lack of pigments and antioxidants within them. Colored cauliflower doesn’t have this problem, since it has some of these pigments, and it is healthier than regular cauliflower, but both fail in the taste category, providing bland, occasionally disgusting flavor to your mouth that’s a struggle to enjoy. Additionally, broccoli’s visual appeal and texture is superior to that of regular cauliflower, providing a nice, vibrant hue to itself as opposed to the boring white color of regular cauliflower.

 

Cauliflower can be beneficial at times: it’s a good, light source of carbs and can be helpful for people on a keto diet. It can also be a good supplement to many meals, despite its rather bland taste, and can add a kick to your food. 

 

However, a good fruit/vegetable is one that can be eaten and enjoyed on its own just as much as in a dish, and regular cauliflower comes completely short of that standard. On its own, broccoli is a better food to eat than cauliflower, and it’s also a more refreshing ingredient to mix with other foods.

 

The appeal of broccoli comes through its luscious visual appeal, its refreshing taste, its healthy benefits, and its edibility individually compared to cauliflower. Cauliflower simply cannot live up to the standards of broccoli, so we should stop pretending that it can.