Radish Microgreen Nutrition: How Good Are Radish Microgreens For You?

Radish microgreens are quickly becoming one of the most popular microgreens among chefs, "foodies," and home growers. Not only because of their crisp and bold flavor, but because radish microgreens are very nutritious. 

Compared to radish bulbs, radish microgreens are richer in nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, protein, enzymes, and antioxidants.

How Does Radish Microgreen Nutrition Compare to Mature Vegetables?

Research has shown that nearly all microgreens deliver in average four to six times the level of beneficial nutrients compared with the equivalent mature vegetable or greens.

Specific nutrient levels may vary significantly among different microgreen types. For example, daikon radish microgreens contain the highest levels of vitamin E among the microgreens. 

Daikon radishes aren't that popular with gardener's in North American. However, daikon radishes are more commonly used as microgreens. 

Yes, some radish leaves can be eaten as baby leaf greens. These include the Sai Sai and Hong Vit radishes.

Radish Microgreen Nutrition: An Excellent Addition to Any Healthy Diet

Radish microgreens are a bold and powerful source of nutrients.

They provide vital nutrients in abundance, including proteins, essential amino acids, vitamins, polyunsaturated fats, fiber, minerals, and antioxidants.

Radish Microgreens Contain Essential Amino Acids

Essential amino acids enable the body to conduct innumerable critical processes for life, including energy regulation, enzymatic functioning, tissue growth and repair, immune functions, neurotransmitter production, and calcium absorption, just to name a few.

Unlike nonessential amino acids, essential amino acids can't be made by your body and must be obtained through your diet.

Radish microgreens contain these essential amino acids that your body needs but can't produce itself.

Radish Microgreens Antioxidants Fight Free Radicals

Antioxidants are molecules that can reduce or prevent cellular damage caused by unstable molecules known as free radicals.

Free radicals form in the body either from normal essential metabolic processes such as digestion or external sources such as exposure to X-rays, ozone, cigarette smoking, air pollutants, industrial chemicals, ultraviolet light, or other external environmental stressors.

Free radicals can cause inflammatory conditions, stroke, heart disease, cancer, immune deficiency, and other conditions.

As mentioned, free radicals form from regular metabolic activity 

So they are impossible to avoid and why adding foods such as radish microgreens containing antioxidants to your diet is very important.

Radish Microgreens Are One of The Most Nutritious

Researchers with the United States (U.S.) Department of Agriculture assessed over a dozen commercially available microgreen varieties to analyze their nutritional content.

In 2012, in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, researchers assessed 25 commercially available microgreen varieties to analyze their nutritional content.

They reported that microgreens contained from four to 40 times more vitamins and carotenoids than their mature counterparts. (Carotenoids are antioxidants that are most commonly red, orange, or yellow fat-soluble pigments, providing bold colors to parts of plants).

Of the 25 microgreen varieties tested, daikon radish, red cabbage, garnet amaranth, and cilantro carried the highest vitamin C concentrations, carotenoids, vitamin K, and vitamin E, respectively.

Why You Should Eat Microgreens, Especially Radish Microgreens

Dietary guidelines for 2015-2020 published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture advised that people consume 1 to 4 cups of vegetables daily, depending on age.

Yet as we all know, for many Americans, daily vegetable intake remains far below these recommendations.

As noted above, microgreens, including the increasingly popular radish microgreens, provide a much more significant percentage of health-promoting nutrients than their mature vegetable counterparts. They also offer greater medicinal benefits than those offered by the matured plants.

Therefore, since vegetable intake is below recommended portions, increasing the nutrition density of those we eat will help close the gap.

We also know that the fresher a food source is, the more vitamins and minerals it retains.  

Microgreens cover both bases, they can be quickly and easily grown in the home and served minutes after harvest, and they are one of the most nutrient-dense vegetables available.

What Medical Benefits Do Radish Microgreens Provide?

A growing number of peer-reviewed studies have reported that radish microgreens provide multiple crucial medical benefits due to their rich nutritional components, including antioxidant, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, anti-inflammatory benefits, and anti-cancer properties.

This Isn't New News

Importantly, people have used plants as a medicinal source since ancient times. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks used radish microgreens medicinally. It's believed that the ancient Greeks cherished the radish's health effects so significantly that they cast radishes in gold and displayed them in temples, dedicating them to their god, Apollo.

Which Vitamins are Provided by Radish Microgreens?

Radish microgreens are an excellent source of vitamins, including vitamin A, C, and E and B complex vitamins.

The values below are based on 100-grams of radish microgreens.

Vitamin A:

Radish microgreens provide 391 International Units (IU) or an estimated 8% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin A in the diet.

Vitamin A is a group of fat-soluble retinoids, including retinol, retinal, and retinyl esters.

It plays a crucial role in multiple body functions, including developing and maintaining healthy bones and teeth, soft tissues, skin, and mucous membranes.

It is also vital in cellular communication, immune function, vision, and reproduction.

Retinol converts to retinoic acid, which serves as a hormone-like growth factor for epithelial cells that line the body’s surfaces, including blood vessels and skin.

Retinol also produces pigmentation in the eyes' retinas.

Vitamin B complex:

Radish microgreens are a rich source of B vitamins, a serving includes

• 0.1 milligrams (mg) of vitamin B1 (thiamine) or 8% RDA,
• 0.1 mg of vitamin B2 (riboflavin) or 8% RDA,
• 2.9 mg of vitamin B3 (niacin) or 18% RDA,
• 0.7 mg of vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) or 14% RDA,
• 0.3 mg of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), equalling 14% RDA, and
• 96 micrograms (mcg) vitamin B9 of folate (24% RDA).

Sufficient folate levels are especially important for pregnant women - because folate helps prevent severe congenital disabilities of the fetus’s developing brain and spine (known as neural tube defects).

B vitamins also help to prevent infections and play a vital role in cellular health, energy levels, healthy brain and nerve function, cardiovascular health, red blood cell growth, and more. 

Vitamin C:

Radish microgreens are loaded with vitamin C, containing 37.8 mg, meaning a whopping 42% of the RDA.

Vitamin C is one of the better-known vitamins and is crucial for developing, growing, and repairing all bodily tissues.

It plays a pivotal role in collagen development, maintenance and strength of bones, cartilage, and teeth; immune functioning; iron absorption; and other bodily functions.

Vitamin E:

Daikon radish microgreens have approximately 3.75 mg of Vitamin E in 100-grams of microgreens. This nearly 25% of the RDA.

As noted previously, when compared with other microgreens, the daikon radish microgreens have among the highest levels of vitamin E, which is one of the body's primary antioxidants.

Antioxidants neutralize or reduce free radicals, protecting molecular and cellular components.

As a result, vitamin E may relieve inflammatory diseases and conditions, including arthritis.

In its role as an antioxidant, vitamin E helps to prevent free radicals from oxygenating cholesterol.

Since cholesterol only adheres to blood vessels when oxidized, eating microgreens high in vitamin E such as radish microgreens can lower the risk of developing blocked arteries, reducing the risk of having a stroke or heart attack.

Together with vitamin C and the mineral selenium, vitamin E helps increase arterial elasticity, lower blood pressure, and prevent cardiovascular disease.

Which Minerals Are Provided by Radish Microgreens?

Radish microgreens' nutrition also includes a powerful supply of crucial mineral components of a healthy diet.

These include manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, copper, zinc, potassium, selenium, potassium, and selenium.

Manganese:

Radish microgreens are an excellent source of the trace mineral manganese, providing 0.3 mcg or 13% of the RDA.

The human body stores up to approximately 20 mg of manganese in the bones, liver, kidneys, and pancreas, so it's essential to obtain sufficient manganese through your diet.

Manganese is considered an essential nutrient. Manganese is crucial for proper nervous system functioning and assisting in activating multiple enzymes required for metabolic processes.

Manganese may also play a vital role in bone development and maintenance, reducing inflammation, and controlling blood sugar levels.

Magnesium:

Radish microgreens are a rich magnesium source, considered the fourth most abundant mineral in the body.

Approximately 60% of magnesium in the body is in the bones, and the remainder is in soft tissues, muscle, and bodily fluids, including the bloodstream. Magnesium is a helper molecule in the body's chemical actions conducted by enzymes, supporting countless chemical reactions in the human body.

Magnesium is critical for energy production and maintaining healthy, strong bones and healthy cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems. It also serves to counterbalance calcium, serving as a calcium channel blocker by preventing calcium from activating nerve cells, thereby relaxing nerves. 

Unfortunately, surveys have consistently shown that nearly half of the U.S. population consumes less magnesium than the RDA .

People with type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, sudden cardiac death, and colon cancer commonly have low magnesium levels in the blood and may be correlated.

However, the good news is that radish microgreens contain 44 mg of magnesium, which translates to 11% of the RDA.

Simply adding tasty radish microgreens to your daily diet can tremendously benefit your health.

Phosphorus:

Phosphorus is the second most plentiful mineral in your body.

Your body needs phosphorus for many functions, such as filtering waste, producing DNA and RNA, repairing tissue and cells, maintaining nerve conduction, keeping your bones and teeth strong, and more.

Most people’s diet meets the phosphorus RDA.

However, certain medications, diabetes, and alcohol consumption can lower phosphorus levels in the body.

Radish microgreens deliver 113 mg of phosphorus or 10% of the RDA.

Calcium:

Radish microgreens are an excellent source of calcium, which is the most abundant mineral in the body.

Calcium plays a critical role in many of the body's essential functions. Many of us know that appropriate levels of calcium are important to ensure strong bones and teeth.

However, calcium also aids in muscle movement, blood circulation, transmitting messages from the brain to the rest of the body, among other functions.

Radish microgreens provide 51 mg or 4% of the RDA, so this is another significant benefit of adding these tasty, crunchy microgreens to your diet.

Iron:

Iron is an essential nutrient and plays a key role in blood production. Approximately 70% of the body's iron is contained in red blood cells (hemoglobin) and muscle cells (myoglobin).

Hemoglobin, a protein, transports oxygen in the blood from the lungs to the body's tissues.

Iron deficiency can lead to anemia and associated symptoms, such as severe fatigue.

Radish microgreens also provide 5% of the RDA for iron or 0.9 mg.

Zinc:

This mineral plays a vital role in several body functions, including cell division, bone development, immune cell function, signaling, digestion, metabolism, and wound repair.

Radish microgreens provide 0.6 mg or 5% of the RDA.

Copper:

Copper is also an essential nutrient, and it maintains healthy metabolic processes, aids in the development and maintenance of strong bones, and ensures proper neurological, musculoskeletal, and cardiovascular functioning.

It's estimated that up to one-quarter of North Americans may not be consuming sufficient copper in their diets.

Radish microgreens provide 0.1 mg or 6% of the RDA.

Potassium:

One of the body's most essential minerals, potassium is considered an electrolyte since when dissolved in water, it produces positively charged ions.

Enabling the body to generate the electric charges crucial for many bodily processes.

Potassium regulates nerve signaling, muscle contraction, and fluid balance and may lower blood pressure, reduce water retention, and help prevent strokes.

Radish microgreens contain 86 mg or 2% of the RDA.

Selenium:

Selenium is an essential nutrient necessary for multiple body processes, including gene expression, protein synthesis, enzymatic processes, immune functioning, and wound healing.

It also promotes DNA repair in damaged cells, decreases or prevents cancer cell proliferation, and increases apoptosis. Apoptosis is the process whereby the body removes abnormal cells.

Radish microgreens provide 6-mcg or 1% of the RDA. 

Radish Microgreen Nutrition Summary

Radish microgreens not only have an intense, crispy flavor, but they add variety and color to your dishes while providing a powerful nutritional punch with multiple medicinal benefits.

We published an article that discusses how much microgreens are in a serving size so you can actually calculate the nutritional value that you receive from your radish microgreens each meal.

As you can see, Radish Microgreens are very nutritious.

In other words, as they might have said in the 1980s, radish microgreens are totally rad, so why not try them today? (Okay, we admit that's probably far too corny. But we do agree with the sentiment.)

Are You Ready to Try Your Hand at Growing Radish Microgreens?

Radish microgreens are one of the easiest microgreens to grow. Home Microgreens has several microgreen growing kits if you're starting out. 

We also carry many different types of radish microgreen seeds. Red leaf radishes, purple & red stemmed radishes and radish mixes!

We also have a free guide to growing microgreens!