Nutritional Value Of Dill Weed

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 grasslike 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 flavor 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 percent 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 percent of the vitamin C you need daily, as well as 1 percent 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, though -- 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 Center's suggested dosage of essential fatty acids stands at 1 g to 4 g daily.

Sodium

One serving of dill contains 1 mg of sodium, an amount that barely puts a dent in the daily limit suggested for the majority of Americans by the American Heart Association -- 1,500 mg.

Health Benefits

Dill weed may offer particular benefits to women. Evidence published in the October 2006 edition of the journal "Phytotherapy Research" correlates the consumption of dill with the duration of the menstrual cycle in animal studies. Researchers theorize that women mayconsume dill in order to normalize irregular menstruation and possibly as a way to avoid pregnancy. More research is needed to confirm these findings.