SulforaphaneExplainer
Why broccoli alone won’t give you the sulforaphane the studies used
The studies on sulforaphane used 30 to 70 mg a day. That’s more than 4 pounds of raw broccoli, and a supplement only gets you there if it gets 3 things right.
Brands have paid for promotional consideration in these articles.
If you eat broccoli for your health, sulforaphane is the reason it keeps showing up in research on healthy aging.
It’s the single most studied molecule in longevity, with 3,000+ published studies behind it.
But cooking, which is how most of us eat broccoli, greatly reduces how much sulforaphane you get. And even raw, it takes pounds of broccoli a day to reach the amount the studies used.
What sulforaphane does
Most antioxidants you swallow do their job once, and then they’re gone.
Sulforaphane works another way. It switches on your cells’ own defenses, so they make their own protective enzymes, for hours, from one signal.
That’s why the research covers so much ground. Sulforaphane calms chronic inflammation, the biggest driver of aging, and it supports your immune defenses, heart, brain, energy and blood sugar.
So eating more broccoli sounds like the answer.
Keep eating it. It just won’t get you to the amount the studies used.
How broccoli makes it
Raw broccoli holds 2 things in separate compartments of its cells.
One is glucoraphanin, a stable compound that does nothing by itself. The other is an enzyme called myrosinase.
When you chew, the cell walls break and the two meet. The enzyme converts the glucoraphanin, and sulforaphane appears.
What cooking does
Myrosinase is an enzyme, and heat destroys it.
The glucoraphanin is still there after cooking. There’s just far less enzyme left to convert it.
Your gut bacteria can do some of the converting, and how much they manage varies widely from person to person.
So for sulforaphane, the best broccoli is raw broccoli, chewed well.
Then there’s the amount
The studies that show significant health benefits of sulforaphane used between 30 mg and 70 mg a day.
For a sense of scale, take BROQ, the supplement that delivered the most sulforaphane in the lab test below. One 25 mg serving has as much sulforaphane as 3.5 pounds of raw broccoli.
On that math, the low end of the studied range is more than 4 pounds of raw broccoli a day.
Nobody eats that much.
Supplements run into the same problem
A capsule seems like the easy fix. But a capsule has the same job broccoli does: the glucoraphanin and the enzyme both have to be in there, and they have to meet.
Capsules add a second problem. Most of them open in the stomach, and acid is a bad place for this reaction.
You can see both problems in a lab test. In October 2024, IEH Laboratories tested 20 leading sulforaphane supplements bought at retail, alongside BROQ.
It measured how much sulforaphane a serving of each one delivers.
The testing was commissioned and paid for by the maker of one of the twenty-one products.
11 of the 20 competing products delivered less than 1 mg per serving.
Capsules that open in the stomach were tested in water and in acid. One of the better performers delivered 17.0 mg in water and 1.0 mg in acid.
11 of the 20 competing products delivered less than 1 mg per serving. Of those, 7 came in below the smallest amount the lab reports.
The full lab reports are published.
Sulforaphane delivered per serving
Show these figures as a table
| Product | Sulforaphane per serving |
|---|---|
| BROQ | 25.0 mg |
| SM Nutrition | 16.0 mg |
| Pure TheraPro Rx OncoProtect ES | 14.0 mg |
| Avmacol Extra Strength | 9.0 mg |
| KOYAH Broccoli Sprout Powder | 9.0 mg |
| XYMOGEN OncoPLEX | 7.1 mg |
| Peak Revival-X | 6.6 mg |
| Designs for Health BroccoProtect | 6.0 mg |
| HumanX Sulforaphane+ | 5.3 mg |
| Mara Labs Broc Elite Plus | 1.9 mg |
| Pure TheraPro Rx Nrf2 Boost | 0.6 mg |
| Bein Doux Sulforaphane Complex | 0.5 mg |
| Carlyle Sulforaphane | 0.3 mg |
| Jarrow Formulas BroccoMax | 0.1 mg |
| AKI Broccoli Sprout Powder | 0.0 mg |
| Thorne Crucera-SGS | 0.0 mg |
| Rosmolo Liposomal | 0.0 mg |
| Dr. Mercola Fermented Sprouts | 0.0 mg |
| NeuroBrocc Gummies | 0.0 mg |
| Osasuna Liposomal | 0.0 mg |
| Standard Process Cruciferous | 0.0 mg |
See what all 21 delivered, with the lab reports
What a supplement has to get right
3 things. Each one follows from how broccoli works.
Bring the enzyme. The myrosinase should be in the capsule, right next to the glucoraphanin.
Open in the right place. A delayed-release capsule passes through the stomach and opens in the intestines.
Show the measurement. A lab result for the finished capsule tells you how much sulforaphane a serving delivers. Without one, you’re guessing.
The supplement that delivered the most
BROQ delivered the most sulforaphane of the 21 products tested.
It gets all 3 right. The enzyme is in the capsule, along with broccoli’s glucoraphanin.
Unlike most sulforaphane brands, BROQ’s capsule opens in your intestines, not your stomach, so the ingredients aren’t destroyed by stomach acid before your body absorbs them.
And the measurement is published. Each serving delivers a minimum of 25 mg of sulforaphane.
More than double the sulforaphane of 18 of the 20 other brands tested.
The testing was commissioned and paid for by the maker of one of the twenty-one products.
The directions allow up to 3 servings a day, and 2 puts you at 50 mg, the middle of the range the studies used.
It’s a good fit if you already eat well and want the amount of sulforaphane that food can’t practically give you.
Keep eating broccoli
Broccoli is still worth eating, for its fiber and its vitamin C among other things.
For sulforaphane at the doses the studies used, the practical route is a capsule that’s been measured.
Sources
- IEH Laboratories, lab reports on 21 sulforaphane supplements, October 2024. The testing was commissioned and paid for by the maker of one of the twenty-one products.
- See what all 21 delivered, with the lab reports
Brands have paid for promotional consideration in these articles.