Fennel Bulb

Fennel bulb nutrition facts Delicate, sweet-flavored fennel bulb is one of the regularly featuring ingredients in the Mediterranean cuisine. Its succulent enlarged bulb imparts special “anise like” sweet flavor to the recipes. Bulb fennel is cultivated as a vegetable for its beautiful, squatted stems in many regions in the southern Europe, especially in Italy. It is also known as Florence fennel, finocchio, sweet fennel, etc. Fennel is a member of the Apiaceae (parsley family) and is related to carrots, caraway, anise, cumin, dill, etc.

Bulb fennel is a cool season perennial herb but grown as annual vegetable crop. Unlike seed fennel, the vegetable fennel is a small plant, growing up to only 2 feet in height. As the plant grows, its thickened lower leaves overlap one above the other to form a swollen, bulblike structure just above the ground. At maturity, its bulb measures about 3-5 inches wide and about 3 inches in length.

As the plant grows, oftentimes, surrounding soil is pulled around the stem base to create a mound to obtain long blanched fronds.

Fennel bulb is a versatile vegetable, used since ancient times for its nutritional and medicinal properties. This winter season has some noteworthy essential oils, flavonoid anti-oxidants, minerals, and vitamins that have known to offer health benefits.

Bulb fennel is one of very low calorie vegetables. 100 g bulb carries just 31 calories. Further, it contains generous amounts of fiber (3.1 g/100 g or 8% of RDI), very little fat, and zero cholesterol.

Fresh bulbs give sweet anise-like flavor. Much of this comes from high concentration of aromatic essential oils like anethole, estragole, and fenchone (fenchyl acetate) in the bulb. Anethole has been found to have anti-fungal, and anti-bacterial properties.

The bulbs have moderate amounts of minerals and vitamins that are essential for optimum health. Their juicy fronds indeed contain several vital vitamins such as pantothenic acid, pyridoxine (vitamin B-6), folic acid, niacin, riboflavin, and thiamin in small but healthy proportions. 100 g fresh bulbs provide 27 µg of folates. Folic acid is essential for DNA synthesis and cell division. Adequate folate levels in the diet during pregnancy can help prevent neural tube defects in the newborn babies.

In addition, fennel bulb contains moderate levels of water-soluble vitamin, vitamin-C. 100 g of fresh bulbs provide 12 mg or 20% of vitamin C. Vitamin C helps the body develop resistance against infectious agents and scavenge harmful, pro-inflammatory free radicals. Further, it has small amounts of vitamin A.

The bulbs have very good levels of heart-friendly electrolyte, potassium. 100 g provides 414 mg or 9% of daily-recommended levels. Potassium is an important electrolyte inside the cell. It helps reduce blood pressure and rate of heartbeats by countering effects of sodium. Fennel also contains small amounts of minerals such as copper, iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, and selenium.