Benefits of Rhubarb

Rhubarb is a plant has been used since thousands of years in china, and cultivated into other countries like the USA, Russia, and Turkey. Benefits of Rhubarb for medical and culinary activities have been used since long in China, and now rhubarb is also used for other needs such as used in the rhubarb pie cake, chocolate coloring, rhubarb sauce, and so on.

Rhubarb is a vegetable annual herb belonging to the polygonaceae family of the genus Rheum and is known as rhabarbarum rheum. Rhubarb grows with the size of short, has big leaves around 12 to 18 inch green, somewhat triangular-shaped leaves with red stems, and the plant is spread on the surface of the soil. Rhubarb has small flowers that cluster together in large complexes.

Rhubarb vegetable is easy to grow and live long enough about 10 years to 15 years once established. Rhubarb is usually propagated by using a vegetable and split long rhizomes or roots. Green rhubarb leaves are usually discarded and toxic, while the trunk is cut and taken to various human needs.

Rhubarb plant is one of the vegetables that have few calories which, from 100 g of fresh petioles provides only 21 calories, but rhubarb has some essential nutrients such as Vitamins A, B Complex, C, E, K, Carbohydrate, Protein, Dietary Fiber, Sodium, Potassium, Calcium, Copper, Iron, Magnesium, Manganese, Phosphorus, Selenium, Zinc, ?-carotene, ß-carotene, ß-Crypto-xanthin, lutein and zeaxanthin.

Benefits of Rhubarb

There are a lot of benefits of rhubarb for people, and some of them as below

1. Rhubarb stick or rod that has a rich taste of fresh sweet and sour and ordinary people to eat or be eaten in other forms after processing such as rhubarb pie, sauce, juice, syrup, jelly, sorbet, and cookies
2. The content of Vitamin A and other compounds are poly-phenolic flavonoids such as lutein, ß-carotene, and zeaxanthin in the body converts into vitamin A in the red color of the rhubarb stalks are useful as antioxidants for the body that protects the body from various diseases and helps maintain the integrity of the membrane skin and mucus. Vitamin A is also beneficial for eye health and helps protect the lungs.
3. The content of vitamin K provides other benefit of rhubarb. Vitamin K is beneficial to bone health by promoting the activity osteotrophic formation and strengthening of bones, and also helped limit the damage to nerves in the brain such as assisting in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
4. Since thousands of years ago, rhubarb has been used as a powerful laxative, which caused the anthraquinone content, such as a high-rhein and emodin in rhubarb vegetables where the compound is a cathartic and laxative, and it is not surprising if the rhubarb is also used by people who are dieting or want to lose weight.

Although there are many benefits of rhubarb, but you should not eat rhubarb leaves because they contain toxic substances, including oxalic acid which is a corrosive and nephrotoxic acid that is present in many plants. oxalic acid content of rhubarb leaves can vary, and cooking leaves with soda can make them more toxic by producing soluble oxalate, and rhubarb leaves is believed to also contain other toxins are not known, because it immediately separate the petiole of the leaf stem if want to be consumed even if the stem raw rhubarb also contains oxalic acid, but the discrepancy was small so it may be harmless.