Chia Seeds

I just bought some off Amazon. Here is a link to some ways to use them:

http://www.chiaseedrecipes.com/40-ways-to-use-chia-seeds.php

They are just seeds, so you can cook them.
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Mike

Thanks for the link, Mike! I, too, just bought chia seeds, and this site gave me great, usable ideas. :flowerforyou:

So is this new superfood all it's cracked up to be?

"In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach and human growth hormone," writes Christopher McDougall in Born to Run, the bestselling book about an ultra-distance running tribe in Mexico who fuel their epic jaunts with the seeds. The book is credited with shining the spotlight on chia as food for athletes.

"If you had to pick just one desert-island food, you couldn't do much better than chia, at least if you were interested in building muscle, lowering cholesterol, and reducing your risk of heart disease; after a few months on the chia diet, you could probably swim home," McDougall adds.

Wayne Coates, co-author of Chia: Rediscovering a Forgotten Crop of the Aztecs, agrees. The University of Arizona professor started experimenting with the seeds in South America more than 20 years ago as part of a project to identify alternative crops for farmers in Argentina. He then started cultivating the seeds commercially.
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"I hate to call it a miracle food because there are too many miracles that turn out not to be, but it almost is. Literally, you could live on this stuff because it's pretty much everything you need," Coates says.

Elisabeth Weichselbaum of the British Nutrition Foundation admits she had not heard of chia, but she says the foundation doesn't buy into the idea of a single superfood.

"It is true that some foods are higher in vitamins and minerals, but no single food provides us with everything we need. So the best way to be healthy is to eat a variety of foods," she says.

As an avid runner, Coates relies on the seeds to power his way through 50 and 100-mile races.

"I actually carry it in a film canister on my runs, I down a half a canister and wash it down with water."

Jeffrey Walters of the chia producer Omega 3 Chia is also a firm believer. He says the company has received inquiries from the United Nations World Food Programme to bump up the nutrient content of their rice dole.
Continue reading the main story
How chia is eaten
Bread contains chia

Mixed in couscous
Added to bread or muffin mix
Sprinkled over salad
Chia gel - seeds are soaked in water to form a gel-like substance added to jelly, jam, yoghurt or salad dressing
Agua fresca de chia - seeds are stirred with water, lime juice and sugar to make a cold drink

Source: AZChia

Walters says he has also been contacted by schools looking to sneak nutritional value into canteen fare and doomsdayers searching for a nutrient-dense food to stockpile in the event of a catastrophe.

David Nieman, director of the Human Performance Labs at Appalachian State University, has analysed the nutritional content of chia and its impact on health in a series of studies. Nieman says the seeds "as a nutritional package are wonderful", but they're no "magic pill".

"If you grind it up and sprinkle it on cereal and put it in yogurt, or put it in juice then you are giving yourself a nutritional boost. You're definitely adding to your mineral, fibre, protein, and omega-3 intake, but will it magically cure disease or take away risk factors? It's almost like a cult following for some of these chia people, they claim everything under the sun.

"But after 10 to 12 weeks we don't see anything happening to disease risk factors in free-living people."

Walters says business has doubled each year for the past four years.

In the UK, chia is permitted in bread products at concentrations up to 5%, according to the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes.
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But that's set to change. The ACNFP recently released a largely positive draft opinion on the expanded use of chia seeds in other foodstuffs.

Walters has already seen a drive toward the UK market. One of his clients requested a huge quantity of chia for UK products for 2013.

Health food chain Holland & Barrett already offers whole and milled chia seeds online, ostensibly as a bread ingredient.

"Interest in chia has been building for the last two years, but it is only in the last six months that the product has been readily available in the UK," according to Holland & Barrett's nuts and seeds manager Douglas Thompson.

Although the hype may be new in the UK, the seeds have been around for hundreds of years. The Aztecs relied on chia as a staple food and revered it enough to use for religious ceremonies and medicinal purposes, according to Coates.

"It disappeared for 500 years and the only place you could find it is in a few little villages in Mexico and Guatemala," Coates says.

But even before Coates and his team picked up on the seeds, chia had something of a cult following in the US.
Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens American footballer Ray Rice is one of the athletes advocating chia

Until recently, most Americans would recognise it as the cheesy Christmas gift of choice circa 1990. Chia Pets, terracotta figurines which sprout chia in place of hair, grow from the same seeds.

As with any other "miracle food", it's important not to see chia as a panacea, says Dr Catherine Ulbricht, founder of the Natural Standard Research Collaboration.

"People think with natural therapies that they can take as much as they want because it's natural, but they do have potential side effects just like any therapy," she says.

"Anything that can have an action in your body can also have a reaction. Nothing is 100% spot-on all benefit."

I tried some but I didn't like them.

I ate my chia pet. Does that count?

sigh.....

Chia seed does not promote weight loss or alter disease risk factors in overweight adults.
Nieman DC, Cayea EJ, Austin MD, Henson DA, McAnulty SR, Jin F.

Abstract
The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of chia seed (Salvia hispanica L) in promoting weight loss and altering disease risk factors in overweight adults. The hypothesis was that the high dietary fiber and alpha-linolenic (ALA) contents of chia seed would induce a small but significant decrease in body weight and fat and improve disease risk factors. Subjects were randomized to chia seed (CS) and placebo (P) groups, and under single-blinded procedures, ingested 25 g CS or P supplements mixed in 0.25 L water twice daily before the first and last meal for 12 weeks. Ninety nondiseased, overweight/obese men and women between the ages of 20 and 70 years were recruited into the study, with 76 subjects (n = 39 CS, n = 37 P) completing all phases of the study. Pre- and poststudy measures included body mass and composition (dual energy x-ray absorptiometry), inflammation markers from fasting blood samples (C-reactive protein, interleukin 6, monocyte chemoattractant protein 1, and tumor necrosis factor alpha), oxidative stress markers (trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity and plasma nitrite), blood pressure, and a serum lipid profile. Plasma ALA increased 24.4% compared to a 2.8% decrease in CS and P, respectively (interaction effect, P = .012). No group differences were measured for changes in plasma eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid (interaction effects, P = .420 and .980, respectively). Pre-to-post measures of body composition, inflammation, oxidative stress, blood pressure, and lipoproteins did not differ between CS and P for both sexes. In conclusion, ingestion of 50 g/d CS vs P for 12 weeks by overweight/obese men and women had no influence on body mass or composition, or various disease risk factor measures.

Chia seed supplementation and disease risk factors in overweight women: a metabolomics investigation.
Nieman DC, Gillitt N, Jin F, Henson DA, Kennerly K, Shanely RA, Ore B, Su M, Schwartz S.
Source
Human Performance Laboratory, Appalachian State University, North Carolina Research Campus, Kannapolis, NC, USA. niemandc@appstate.edu
Abstract
OBJECTIVE/SETTING: This study assessed the effectiveness of milled and whole chia seed in altering disease risk factors in overweight, postmenopausal women using a metabolomics approach.
DESIGN/INTERVENTION:
Subjects were randomized to chia seed (whole or milled) and placebo (poppy seed) groups, and under double-blinded procedures ingested 25 g chia seed or placebo supplements each day for 10 weeks.
SUBJECTS:
Subjects included 62 overweight (body-mass index 25 kg/m(2) and higher), nondiseased, nonsmoking, postmenopausal women, ages 49-75 years, with analysis based on the 56 subjects who completed all phases of the study.
OUTCOME MEASURES:
Pre- and poststudy measures included body mass and composition, blood pressure and augmentation index, serum lipid profile, inflammation markers from fasting blood samples, plasma fatty acids, and metabolic profiling using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry with multivariate statistical methods including principal component analysis and partial least-square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA).
RESULTS:
Plasma α-linolenic acid (N=ALA) increased 58% (interaction effect, p=0.002) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) 39% (p=0.016) in the milled chia seed group (N=14) compared to nonsignificant changes in the whole chia seed (N=16) and placebo (N=26) groups. Pre-to-post measures of body composition, inflammation, blood pressure, augmentation index, and lipoproteins did not differ between chia seed (whole or milled) and placebo groups (all interaction effects, p>0.05). Global metabolic difference scores for each group calculated through PLS-DA models were nonsignificant (Q(2)Y<0.40), and fold-changes for 28 targeted metabolites associated with inflammation and disease risk factors did not differ between groups.
CONCLUSIONS:
Ingestion of 25 g/day milled chia seed compared to whole chia seed or placebo for 10 weeks by overweight women increased plasma ALA and EPA, but had no influence on inflammation or disease risk factors using both traditional and metabolomics-based measures.

I use chia seeds in these refrigerator oatmeal recipes - oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, etc. - they are yummy.

http://www.theyummylife.com/Refrigerator_Oatmeal