Nutritional Value Of Dill Weed
17/01/2012
Providing a tangy addition to food dishes.
Fresh dill weed features green feathery fronds suitable for use as a culinary herb. It's used in pickling and pairs well with fish and eggs. The taste is similar to caraway with grass-like notes. The nutritional value of dill is low, but that doesn't make it bad for you, it provides trace amounts of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, and it also confers some medicinal benefit.
Basic Nutrition
A 1 g serving of fresh dill contains less than one calorie, making it a smart choice to add flavour to the foods in your meal plan without contributing much in the way of calories. Of course, with so few calories, this herb has very little in the way of macronutrients for energy. Each serving has 0.03 g of protein, 0.07 g of carbohydrates and 0.01 g of fat.
Vitamins and Minerals
Add a serving of dill weed to a recipe, and you take in 2 per cent of the daily recommended intake of vitamin A. This is a small amount, but even this contributes to healthy vision. Vitamin A helps reduce the risk of night blindness and macular degeneration. One serving of this herb also provides 1 per cent of the vitamin C you need daily, as well as 1 per cent of the manganese.
Fatty Acids
Eating dill introduces small amounts of essential fatty acids into your diet that are useful for your cognitive and heart function. In fact, an article published in the July 2004 issue of "American Family Physician" notes that getting adequate amounts of omega-3 fatty acids reduces mortality for people with heart disease. You need much more than the amount in dill, each serving provides 0.1 mg of omega-3 fatty acids and 0.8 mg of omega-6 fatty acids. The University of Maryland Medical Centre’s suggested dosage of essential fatty acids stands at 1 g to 4 g daily.