To stay and remain healthy, you must eat only healthy foods. Unfortunately, our present day dynamic environment is not presenting an enabling platform that fosters a strict intake of only healthy foods. This is observed with the increasing production, distribution and circulation of artificial and junk foods.
Furthermore, the high consumption of dietary fat and starchy food remains a major concern in nutrition research. The concern is that failure to make an early U-turn and stick to only healthy food options poses a high risk of onset of several chronic malignant diseases.
Fortunately, most of these healthy foods are quite affordable and easily at our beck and call. The call to action is for you to strive hard and endeavour to eat nothing but only healthy foods. Tough one right? But I bet you’ll be glad you heed to this call today a few years from now!
There are loads of healthy foods you can easily reach out to and one of such is the chia seed. If you are still on this page, then it might interest you to learn more about the benefits of chia seeds.
Chia is coined from the Nahuatl word “chian”, which connotes oily while chia seed means "beverage seed”. Being a functional food with health-giving additives, understanding how we can benefit from the nature's gift is very paramount.
The benefits of chia seeds cannot be overemphasised as several active ingredients and essential compounds have been found present. Peradventure you are unsure of how chia seeds can be used, it might interest you to know that they are useful in several ways such as; foodstuff, culinary purposes, emulsifier, suspension production, food thickener, rehydrating agent, chelating agent, gel production, clarifying agent or as a foam enhancer.
Benefits of Chia Seeds
- Culinary Purposes: Chia seeds (tokhm-e-sharbatī) is edible thus can be consumed in several ways such as beverages, smoothies, drinks, bakery products and main meals. Chia seeds can also be used as topping on bread, sandwiches, granola bars, salads, cereals and yoghurt.
- Medicinal Purposes: Studies show that chia seeds contain antimicrobial, antioxidant, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antidepressant, anticoagulant, antiviral, laxative, anti-anxiety and antineoplastic properties. A research by Suri et al., (2016) shows that chia seeds may be suitable for preventing, treating and managing most types of non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, this special seed can help to slow down the digestion of carbohydrates thereby improving the postprandial blood glucose levels in the blood.
- Anticancer Properties: Cancer is increasingly becoming a major threat to humanity. A type of cancer that continues to pose a great risk to the male gender is the prostate cancer. Studies reveal that the crude extract of Chia seeds is considered therapeutically suitable for tackling prostate cancer cells.
- Aids Digestion: Due to the high mucilaginous constituents of the chia seed, it is considered effective for aiding digestion and facilitating the removal of faecal matters through the anus.
- Antimicrobial activity: Chia seeds contain antimicrobial properties thus effective against effective against A.actinomycetamcmitans, P.gingivalis and F.nucleatum.
- Laxative Properties: Chia seeds can be used as a laxative for stimulating or facilitating the evacuation of faeces from the bowels.
- Maintains Healthy Serum Lipid Level: Chia seeds help to maintain healthy serum lipid level.
Here are other health-related articles published on my steemit blog that might interest you:
IS RASPBERRY KETONE IDEAL FOR WEIGHT LOSS?
REASONS WHY PSYLLIUM IS HIGHLY BENEFICIAL
ALL ABOUT KOMBUCHA: ITS BENEFITS, USES AND SIDE EFFECTS
Images from Pixabay.
Read more about the benefits, uses and side effects of chia seeds including the references via https://globalfoodbook.com/chia-seeds-nutritional-values-benefits-and-side-effects