Broccoli vs Spinach: Which Is Less Inflammatory?

Neither broccoli nor spinach is less inflammatory than the other: both score 1, the lowest mark on the inflammation scale. These are the two vegetables most people fall back on, and they end up in the same pan often enough that the real question is what each one adds.

Broccoli’s main compound, sulforaphane, does not exist in the floret until you cut or chew it. Once it does, it acts on your cells rather than on the meal, stepping up the enzymes your body uses to clear damage, so the effect runs on for hours after you have finished eating. A cup of broccoli also covers a day of vitamin C, with useful vitamin K and folate alongside it.

Spinach makes volume easy. A whole bag collapses into two forkfuls in a hot pan, so you can eat far more leaf than any salad would let you, and eating more plants in place of the foods that raise inflammation is the point of the whole exercise. Spinach is one of the best plant sources of magnesium, which most people fall short of, and it carries lutein and zeaxanthin, pigments that work against the cell damage feeding inflammation. One thing to know: spinach is high in oxalate, and that oxalate binds most of the iron it is famous for, so very little of that iron reaches you. Put both in the same week rather than the same pan. Roast a tray of broccoli one night, and wilt a bag of spinach into whatever you are cooking on another.