Super K

I hope you’re not going to be disappointed to find this post has nothing whatsoever to do with K-Mart.

Yesterday’s post about broccoli mentioned that it was a vegetable very high in Vitamin K. It was stressed as if that was really important. Because I have absolutely no idea what Vitamin K is or what it’s supposed to do for me, I put on my Food Detective hat and set out for the land of Google.

Turns out, Vitamin K is a simple vitamin to understand because it only does one thing. Hardly even worth the post, really, but now you will know for the rest of your life that if you did not have Vitamin K in your system, your blood would not clot.

Well that's pretty important. Nobody wants to slowly bleed to death from a shaving mishap. Or suppose your period just never stopped. Eventually, even a starving vampire wouldn't find you worth the effort.

It is very rare for a person to be Vitamin K deficient. (But it is important to note that a deficiency can occur following a long-term antibiotic treatment.) If you were deficient, all of your symptoms would relate to bleeding. Extended periods, bleeding gums, excess bruising...that kind of thing.

Vitamin K is produced in the body by normal gastrointestinal bacteria, but you might wonder what foods you can also find it in. I’m thinking probably Special K cereal – otherwise I just can’t explain the name.

Cabbage, cauliflower, spinach and other green, leafy vegetables are all good sources of Vitamin K. And CEREAL. Aha! I knew it. Oh. Wait. Maybe the "K" stands for Kellogg's.

(Food Detective on-the-fly research result: There is ZERO Vitamin K in Special K cereal.)

So there you have it. Eat your green vegetables and keep your blood inside your body.