Cabbage

Anything someone says three times is not necessarily true.

In my last post, I showed you some startling (or perhaps not-so-startling) statistics -- one and a half sentences into a post and already I’m starting with the alliteration -- about cabbages wordiness in government documents.

Turns out I have helped to perpetuate a hoax.

Reader and first-time commenter Dan Thoms, a graphic designer who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, graciously supplied a link that exposes the truth of the matter.

This is the link.

As someone said, “Live and learn.”

Live and learn. Live and learn. Live and learn.

The Wikipedia article on cabbage contains 4,082 words. Here are some of them:

Cabbage is a popular cultivar of the species Brassica oleracea Linne (Capitata Group) of the Family Brassicaceae (or Cruciferae) and is used as a leafy green vegetable. [Editor’s note. Please notice that Wikipedia does not say that cabbage is a leafy green vegetable, only that it is used as a leafy green vegetable. Hmmmm. --RWP]

It is a herbaceous, biennial, dicotyledonous flowering plant distinguished by a short stem upon which is crowded a mass of leaves, usually green but in some varieties red or purplish, which while immature form a characteristic compact, globular cluster (cabbage head). [Editor’s note. I couldn’t have said it better myself. --RWP]

Cabbage was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans; Cato the Elder praised this vegetable for its medicinal properties, declaring that “It is the cabbage that surpasses all other vegetables.” [Editor’s note. Only he probably said something like “Brassica oleracea Linne alia vegetabilis surpassitorum est.” --RWP]

The largest cabbage dish ever made was on 19 December 2008 in the Macedonian city of Prilep, with 80,191 sarmas (cabbage rolls) weighing 544 kg (1,221 lbs). [Editor’s note. Evidently, them sarma had karma. --RWP]

In 1653, in a publication called A Complete Herbal, Nicholas Culpepper wrote, “Cabbages are extremely windy, whether you take them as meat or as medicine, as windy meat as can be eaten, unless you eat bag-pipes or bellows, and they are but seldom eaten in our days; and Colewort flowers are something more tolerable, and the wholesomer food of the two.” [Editor’s note. No comment. --RWP]

Boiled cabbage has become stigmatized because of its strong cooking odor and the fact that it causes flatulence. [Editor’s note. Ditto. --RWP]

In European folk medicine, cabbage leaves are used to treat acute inflammation. A paste of raw cabbage may be placed in a cabbage leaf and wrapped around the affected area to reduce discomfort. Some claim it is effective in relieving painfully engorged breasts in breastfeeding women. [Editor’s note. I’m only telling you what Wikipedia says. --RWP]

The top ten producers of cabbage and other brassicas as of June 2008 were People’s Republic of China (36,335,000 tons), India (5,283,200 tons), Russia (4,054,000 tons), South Korea (3,000,000 tons), Japan (2,390,000 tons), Poland (1,375,900 tons), Ukraine (1,300,000 tons), Indonesia (1,250,000 tons), United States (1,171,350 tons), and Romania (1,120,000 tons). Total cabbage production in the world in 2008 was 69,214,270 tons. [Editor’s note. Source: “Food And Agricultural Organization of United Nations: Economic And Social Department: The Statistical Division.” Food and Agriculture Organization. --RWP]

The time has come to close this post, and I will do so with a saying that was common in Texas fifty years ago:

“Two heads are better than one, as long as one of them is not a cabbage head.”