Chia Seeds

Never taken Chia Seeds but have used Flaxseed in the past

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/3061/2

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/3163/2

Both of these are very easy to get into your diet added to yoghurts,soups,cereal etc
If it's as part of an overall healthy diet go for it as it will bump up your omega 3 levels without having to eat fish,I can only tolerate Mackerel and the bones are annoying

Anyone with headache or stomach problems would do well to keep their diets simple and narrow based.
Which does not include fad foods.

I have a jar full of them, having got excited about the concept, but I haven't the motivation to keep using them.

They don't exactly look very appetising (a bit like small frogspawn) in dishes where they can be seen.

I can but imagine porridge made with water!

Has to be mik for me, and with a generous spoonful Golden Syrup, Canadian Maple Syrup, or Honey.

Porridge makes me fart, those ones which you know will smell bad before they even emerge

I don't drink at all now Foinavon the porridge was part of a lifestyle change and I was having it at bedtime which may have been a factor 6+ hours without drinking anything

The reason I mention fad foods is that some people feel off colour a lot the time.
On reason could be that they react to lectins.
Flax seeds get a very good press from the health boys, yet they have the potential to make people who are vulnerable to lectins feel quite lousy.
I imagine Chia seeds might have the same potential.

Lectins could be the reason why people who react to wholemeal bread can take white bread okay.
With the husk removed so are most of the lectins.

Foinavon....why didn't I think of it before?

I always have a jar of sultanas, soaking in Jack Daniels, for my baked cheese cakes.

Next time I have porridge I will whack a few of them into it....

Yum,Yum, Yum

You don't eat them as seeds....they swell up like Sago

Is that similar with flaxseed Dr Crippen regarding Omega 3 absorbtion?

Looks like I fell for that one took 2/3 tablespoons with soup per day for about 2 months
Had been reading a fair bit at the time about Omega 3/6 ratios and was fed up of hand eating mackerel because of the bones.

Denzil I haven't noticed whether statins have been mentioned.  It has been noted there can be reactions re muscle pains etc.  Do you take them at all??

I take the view that it's not what we eat that makes us well, as much as it's more likely to be what we eat that's making us ill.

That balanced diet tripe trotted out by NHS health professionals doesn't hold water at all.
A balanced diet is a diet for people to fall foul of the common ailments.

We only have to look around at other people to see the proof that a balanced diet doesn't work.
People's health generally is appalling.
Undernourishment is certainly the one thing that isn't wrong with them.

Raw Food And Man

Vince GirondaCompiled by Stephen A. Downs for Vince Gironda

PART I: Processed Food and Physical Deterioration.

If there is one thing that we could speculate as being highly probable concerning the life style of primitive man, it is that he obtained his food primarily from the vegetable kingdom and ate it raw. Historically it appears that complexities in food preparation and processing have come with the more complex and technical societies. Corresponding to the rise in production and consumption of refined and processed food has been the rise in physical deterioration, and the birth of heretofore unknown degenerative diseases.

In his landmark publication, Nutrition And Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston A. Price draws a most profound corollary between the consumption of refined and processed foods among primitive peoples of the world, and the corresponding rise in physical deterioration. Dr. Price's investigations took him completely around the world, studying cultures on every major continent. As Dr. Price was a dentist, he took most interest in individual jaw formation, tooth structure, and general oral hygiene. He studied the live subjects that he encountered, and compared them with past generations that he uncovered for study at burial sites. He found that where past generations had subsisted on raw, unprocessed food, the jaw formations were near perfect, dental arches were well formed, tooth structure was a work of art, carries were nonexistent, and all thirty-two teeth were intact. In studying generations following the introduction of refined and processed foods into the dietary, certain degenerative changes in the mouth were noted: 1) jaw formations were malformed, 2) dental arches were misshapen, 3) tooth structure was uneven, faulty, and badly decayed, and 4) many teeth in the mouth were missing. In Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and Australia, the story was the same; with the introduction of refined and processed foods into the dietary of primitive peoples through the influx of so-called civilization came the corresponding rise in degenerative processes. In the final analysis, Price's studies proved conclusively that human physical health and well being is dependent upon a raw, unprocessed dietary; and, that processed food seemed to pave the way for disease and degeneration.

Another monumental work in this area was done over fifty years ago by Dr. Robert McCarrison. In 1927, Dr. McCarrison was appointed Director of Nutrition Research in India under the Research Fund Association. His travels had taken him through the remote section of the Himalayas where the people of Hunza had lived since the time of Alexander the Great. In his Studies in Deficiency Diseases, McCarrison states concerning the health of the Hunzas:

"During the period of my association with these people, I never saw a case of asthenic dyspepsia, of gastric or duodenal ulcer, or appendicitis, of mucous colitis, or cancer . . . among these people the "abdomen over-sensitive" to nerve impressions, to fatigue, anxiety or cold was unknown. The consciousness of the existence of this part of their anatomy was, as a rule, related solely to the feeling of hunger. Indeed, their buoyant abdominal health has, since my return to the West, provided abdominal contrast with the dyspeptic and colonic lamentation's of our highly civilized communities."

Dr. McCarrison decided to perform some experiments to find if diet had a role to play in the superior health possessed by the Hunzas, and their virtual freedom from the variety of degenerative diseases that plagued Western Civilization. For his work he chose albino rats because of their love for human food, and also because their short life span would enable observation of a complete life history. The first phase of his experiments entailed taking at random healthy rats, and placing them in ideal conditions; fresh air, sunshine, and clean surroundings. Their diet consisted of foods liberally consumed by the Hunzas: whole grains, raw milk and butter, sprouted pulse, and a variety of fresh raw vegetables. On rare occasions he would include a small portion of meat with some bones (the Hunzas were basically vegetarians, eating meat only on festive occasions), and always provided abundant fresh water. After twenty-seven months on the Hunza diet, the nearly 1,200 rats were killed and carefully examined. McCarrison reported:

"During the past two and a quarter years there has been no case of illness in the "universe" of albino rats, no death from natural causes in the adult stock, and, but for a few accidental deaths, no infantile mortality. Both clinically and at postmortem, examination of this stock has been shown to be remarkably free from disease. It may be that some of them have cryptic disease of one kind or another, but if so, I have failed to find either clinical or microscopic evidence of it."

After finding in later experiments that diseased rats were returned to health on the Hunza diet, McCarrison took batches of rats and placed them on a diet typical to that of the people of India; rice, pulses, and vegetables cooked with a variety of condiments. It wasn't long before the over two thousand rats fed the deficient Indian diet developed a variety of disease conditions: heart, kidney and glandular weaknesses, gastrointestinal disorders, ulcers, anemia, crooked spines, bad teeth, eye ailments, various skin disorders, and loss of hair. These results led him to take still another batch of rats and place them on a diet typical to that taken by the poorer classes of England: canned meat. boiled vegetables, white bread, margarine, jarns and jellies, and sweetened tea. Mc-Garrison reported that not only were a variety of disease conditions produced on the faulty diet, but also the rats became hypertensive. They fought among themselves, and by the sixteenth day of the experiment the stronger rats were killing and eating the weaker ones.

The frightening conclusions to be drawn from Dr. McCarrison's research findings are the unfortunate realities of today's world. More than sixty years after one of the most massive experiments ever performed on mankind viz., food technology, refining and processing, the results are most evident. Hospitals are filled with masses of humanity plagued with a variety of disease conditions virtually unknown prior to the turn of the century.

In his "Briefe aus dem Lam-barenespital" (Letters from the Lambarene Hospital) in Africa, 1954, Professor Albert Schweitzer, world renowned doctor to the peoples of Africa, relates findings similar to those of both Price and McCarrison. He states:

"I have to point out a happening in the modern civilization of the Hospital, something which happened this year. We had to perform the first appendicitis operation on a native of this region. How it turned out that this so frequent sickness of white people did not occur in the colored of this country cannot be convincingly explained. Probably its still exceptional occurrence is traceable to a change in the nutrition. Many natives, especially those who are living in larger communities do not now live the same way as formerly - they lived almost exclusively on fruits and vegetables, bananas, cassava, ignam, taro, sweet potatoes and other fruits. They now live on condensed milk, canned butter meat and fish preserves, and bread.

The date of the appearance of cancer, another disease of civilization, cannot be traced in our region with the same certainty as that of appendicitis. We cannot state decisively that formerly there was no cancer at all, because the microscopic examinations of all tested tumors revealing their real nature, has only been in existence here for a few years. Based upon my own experience, going back to 1913, I can say, if cancer occurred at all it was very rare, but that it became more frequent since. However, it is not spread as much as it has among the white race in Europe and America."

Research from every corner of the globe has shown a definite correlation between the consumption of refined and processed food, and the incidence of physical degeneration. If this seems like a strong indictment against the food processing industry, it is meant to be; the evidence against them is just too voluminous and conclusive. Refining and processing foods to preserve their keeping qualities almost completely destroys their life giving potentials. Vitamins and minerals are lost, enzymes are completely destroyed, proteins are coagulated, fats are rendered unutilizable, and the list goes on and on.

In our next instalment we shall investigate one of the refiner's most insidious masterpieces, sugar - the 99.9 per cent pure product.

(IronMan Magazine May 1974 Vol. 33 No. 4)
Comments (1)

I considered a vegan type diet a while back but was put off by further research especially into the high levels of Heart Disease which came down to not consuming Vitamin B12 from animals and having a poor Omega 3/6 ratio despite having little or no obesity.
In the end I came to the conclusion of eating nutrient dense food,low sugar and good supplementation might be best for me and I can honestly say I feel than I did when I was 20 ish,though my insides may say otherwise.

Wow what an article I'm definitely going to invest in Folate and B12,I'll have to have a think about B6 as I get about 10mg with ZMA though probably will get it as plenty of room limits wise.
I've now got an excuse for eating Cornflakes

Here's something that's useful to know.

Total cholesterol is made up of HDL and LDL. LDL is the bad guy.
LDL also has a good guy and a bad guy.

If your LDL is mostly the good stuff you're in the clear. If it's mostly the bad stuff you're not.
The test does not show up which one it is, so they treat it all the same regarding medication.
So you could be taking statins for something you don't need to take them for. Or you could really be in the soup.

Now some more bad news, when alcohol is processed in the liver it produces loads of this bad LDL the Very Low Density Lipoprotien. It does the same when it processes fructose.
Anyone who wants to look after their heart, would do well to stop drinking and keep the lid on sugar intake as well.