Sage

Food · Pantry & Condiment · Food, Typed Supps

A herb, not a food. The impressive numbers on the table belong to 100g of dried leaf, and a generous pinch is about one gram.

Stage by stage

Intake (Aromatics released): Crushing and heat release the volatile terpenes that carry sage's flavour and smell.
Digestion (About a gram of leaf): A culinary pinch is roughly one gram, so a hundredth of everything in the table.
Absorption (Negligible nutrients): Mineral and fibre contribution at that dose is trivial against daily requirements.
Claimed effects (Weak evidence): Extract trials for memory and hot flushes use doses far above cooking amounts and remain small and unreplicated.

Time to effect

None: No measurable systemic effect at culinary amounts; extract trials run 4 to 12 weeks at much higher doses.

Allergens

None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

Not scored: the satiety index is measured on 240 kcal servings, and nobody eats a 240 kcal serving of this. The question does not apply rather than the answer being unknown.

Cost band

Pricey — roughly £25 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Volatile oils (thujone, cineole, camphor)
Antioxidant polyphenols

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 315
Protein: 10.6g
Carbohydrate: 20.4g
of which sugars: 1.7g
Fat: 12.8g
of which saturated: 7g
Fibre: 40.3g
Sodium: 11mg

Food vs. supplement

Concentrated sage extracts are a genuinely different product from the herb, both in dose and in thujone exposure. The culinary herb is safe and nutritionally minor; the extract is neither automatically.

Kitchen tip

Dried sage early in the cooking, fresh sage late. Fat extracts its terpenes far better than water, which is why sage in butter works and sage in a thin stock does not.

Common myth

"Sage is one of the richest sources of calcium and iron there is." In reality: Only per 100g of dried leaf, which nobody eats. A pinch weighs about a gram, making the real contribution around 16mg of calcium — under 2% of a day's requirement.