Chicory is a vegetable that belongs to the family of the Asteraceae (Compositae) with more than a thousand genera and 20,000 species. This family is characterized by its flowers are made by the fusion of hundreds or even thousands of tiny flowers. This applies, for example, sunflower.

Form: you can find two very different varieties of chicory in their appearance. A green leaves, thin, jagged edges, and one with broad leaves, scalloped edges and shoot, looking like a lettuce.

Size: The plant can reach 75 cm in height.

Color: there are varieties with leaves that range from light green to dark red (with lighter tones in the leaves of the interior) and they all have a white midrib.

Taste: the leaves have a slightly bitter taste, accented in darker outside, if eaten raw. Bleaching is a common practice that applies to the chicory to reduce its bitterness, to increase the tenderness of the leaves and whitish. To do this, they are deprived of light from one to three weeks for cultivation.

In the leaves of chicory water is the most abundant component, followed by carbohydrates, making it one of the vegetables with lower energy, only 18 Kcal per hundred grams. The nutrients highlighted in chicory are provitamin A (it can be considered a good source) and potassium.

Rather than its nutritional components, chicory its renowned digestive properties due to different substances, many of which are abundant in leaves and roots, as lactulopicrina intibina and a substantial amount of inulin and tannins, chlorogenic acid, compound phenolic antioxidant.

The intibina is a principle which gives the bitter taste of chicory and is concentrated in the leaves, particularly on your nerves. It has the ability to stimulate the secretion of digestive juices and facilitate the emptying of the gallbladder (colagogo effect), processes necessary for good digestion. In addition, it is favored by the content in inulin, a carbohydrate present in leaves and roots that stimulates appetite and helps digestion.