Raw broccoli preserves sulforaphane, a compound that cooking destroys. If you cook it anyway, add radish, which has the enzyme broccoli loses to heat. Smashing raw broccoli and eating it with olive oil and lemon maximizes the benefit.
If you said, what's the food you would not want to eliminate from your diet? Right now, it's broccoli. I love broccoli with olive oil and lemon. But why the raw broccoli requirement?
When you cook broccoli, you inactivate the enzyme that releases the sulforaphane. Yeah. It turns out it's a very active enzyme. So all it takes is one radish or even a slice of radish. So when you were going to the Upgrade Cafe in Santa Monica, whenever you had cruciferous veggies, there was always a piece of watermelon radish on top. Enzyme that was there for a reason. It's funny, it's so active, if you wanted to be really fancy, you would take, like, one little stalk and just smash it. Because the more smashed it is, more exposed to air, the more of the enzyme is released.
