Mineral and vitamin source

Mineral and vitamin source JoAnn Guest
May 29, 2007 07:34 PDT

Mineral and vitamin source
Grains are a very good source of magnesium, calcium, and potassium.
Grains are a good source of chromium- necessary for maintaining
normal glucose tolerance (low chromium intakes are very common in
the industrialized diet, and over the long term this chromium
deficiency may contribute to onset of type 2 diabetes mellitus, or
middle-age diabetes). Legumes are a useful source of these
minerals. Seeds in general are excellent sources of B-complex
vitamins and vitamin E.

Two of the most critical nutrients for humans are folic acid,
essential for normal cell division, immune response and correct
developement of the fetus in the womb; and thiamine, vitamin B1,
essential for metabolising the carbohydrates in seeds, nuts, and
tubers. Legumes, interestingly, are particularly rich sources of
both these fundamentally important elements.

Legumes are high in iron and B vitamins, particularly B6. The iron
in beans is reasonably bioavailable, ranging from 53% to 76%,
depending on the variety. The iron levels also vary between
cultivated varieties - the range is from about 50 to 150
micrograms/gram (dry weight). USDA Agriculture Research Station
experiments have also shown that once cooked, there is no
relationship between phytate or tannin concentrations and the amount
of iron that is bioavailable. Researchers in Japan are currently
working to genetically engineer legume iron carrying protein
(ferritin) into rice, which, it is estimated, would enable a typical
rice meal to supply from 30-50% of daily dietary iron needs. Sesame
seeds are rich in calcium and in vitamin E, altho' when hulled the
calcium analysis drops off.

Fibre source
Whole grains have a lot of 'woody' (for want of a better
description) fibre in their seed coat which help regulates bowel
activity. What is less well known is that many also contain soluble
fibre, which also has positive health benefits. The soluble and
insoluble fiber in seeds is known to be helpful in preventing
constipation and diseases of the digestive tract such as
diverticulitis. It is also suspected that fiber may have a
protective effect against colon cancer. Oats contain quite high
amounts of soluble fiber, as does barley, and to a lesser extent,
wheat. Legumes high in soluble fiber are lentils, pinto beans, and
black beans. Legumes are also an excellent source of insoluble
fiber. The fiber content of legumes slows the digestion of their
carbohydrates content, regulating blood sugar levels.
Place in a human-natural diet
Carbohyrate source
Whole grains are made of a rich starch store (the endosperm)
comprising from 60- 80% of the seed (depending on the species and
variety), the embryo plant (the germ) rich in protein and fats and
vitamins and comprising only about 3% of the seed, and the seed
coat, the bran, which is where most of the B vitamins (and many of
the minerals) are. At 80% carbohydrate, seeds are, like tubers, an
excellent fuel for daily activity. And whole seeds contain the B1
vitamin necessary for carbohydrate metabolism. Grains are
relatively 'slow burners', so they don't push up your blood sugar
levels and then suddenly drop them - they tend to keep blood sugars
relatively stable.

Protein source

Wheat has about 8-15% protein, depending
on the variety (ancient wheats had a higher protein content),
rice
has a low content, at 7%. So grains in general are perhaps best
regarded primarily as an energy and vitamin and mineral source.

Source of fats, including essential fatty acids
The oils in oily seeds are an excellent energy source, and when
eaten as part of the whole seed are slowly parcelled out into the
blood stream over a period of hours. While oily seeds are a
concentrated source of calories, like any calory containing (or
convertable) food, their calories are only stored as fat when we eat
more calories than we need for energy. Otherwise, the oils and
carbohydrate are burnt in the furnace of active life.

Legumes from which oil is extracted, such as organic peanuts (40-59%
oil
content) and soya beans, obviously have a high oil content (some non
leguminous seeds, such as sesame seeds also have a high oil content -
sesame has between 45% and 60%) . When whole seeds are eaten, it is
suspected that the oil portion is very slowly released and
metabolised, preserving and enhancing both stable energy levels and
favorable blood fat chemistry (the effect on blood fat profile of
consuming the expressed oils can be quite different). Whole peanuts
have been found to be particularly helpful in maintaining energy
levels in times of sustained exertion, such as playing soccer.

Two kinds of fats, 'omega-3' and 'omega-6' are essential for various
body functions, and have to be obtained from the food we eat, as the
human body can't synthesise them from other dietary fats. While
omega-6 fatty acids are quite pervasive in the Western diet, Omega-3
is not. Linolenic acid, an omega-3 fat, is found in flax seeds,
soya beans, and pumpkin seeds. Flaxseeds (linseed) is a very rich
source of omega-3 fatty acids, with about 18.1% omega-3 content.

The very oily seeds of the Perilla plant ('Korean sesame'), Perilla
frutescens are also a rich source of linolenic acid.

Hormone regulatory effect in women
Naturally occurring plant substances, particularly in legumes, have
been shown to have a weak hormonal effect. Given our long
evolutionary association with legumes, one must wonder if this
effect hasn't become integrated into our genetic biochemical
background.

Flax oil, in particular, is said to be 'estrogenic', that is it can
attach itself to cellular estrogen receptors. This plant derived
source of 'plant estrogen' may be helpful for postmenopausal women
showing signs of hormone deficiency, such as atrophy and thinning of
the vaginal walls. The natural lignans in as little as 10 grams of
ground whole flaxseed (daily intake) have been shown to reduce two
forms of estrogen associated with breast cancer risk - estrone
sulfate and estradiol - in the blood of postmenopausal women.
Soybeans also have a weak estrogenic effect, and are also believed
to be protective against breast cancer risk.

Whole grains in general are suspected to help regulate estrogen
levels in the body, through their natural plant estrogens
(phytoestrogens) content, and through an effect of their fiber
content. The fibre 'lignan' in grains has been found to be weakly
estrogenic.

Hormonally potent forms of estrogen (estradiol and estrone) are
naturally metabolised in the liver to a less active form (estriol).
This metabolite is eliminated into the bile, which empties into the
digestive tract. The fibre in seeds binds to this estrogen, and it
is removed from the body. There is some suggestion that without
sufficient fibre, this estriol is altered by gut bacteria to the
more potent forms and re-absorbed, altering the ratios of the forms
of estrogen in the blood. There is some suggestion that such
inbalances of the 'estrogen profile' may tend to predipose such a
woman to pre-menstrual syndrome, fibroids, heavier menstrual
bleeding, and maybe even breast cancer.

Soybeans are filled with natural plant estrogens (or phytoestrogens)
called bioflavonoids. Certain bioflavonoids are weak estrogens,
having 1/50,000 the potency of a dose of synthetic estrogen. As weak
estrogens, these compounds bind to estrogen receptors and act as a
substitute form of estrogen in the body. They compete with the more
potent estrogens made by a woman's body for these cell receptor
sites. As a result, bioflavonoids can help to regulate estrogen
levels.

After menopause, estrogen levels drop, and dietary sources of
estrogen may have an important role in the female body. In Japan,
where phytoestrogen rich soybeans are a common part of the diet
(altho' only around 4-5 grams of soyabeans per day are eaten, on the
average), only 10-15% of women experience menopause symptoms, where
80- 85% of European and North American women (and who eat a
standard western diet) do experience symptoms at menopause. A recent
study found postmenopausal US women had only around 5% of the
phytoestrogen intake of their Asian counterparts - and almost all
that small intake was from lignans in fruit.

Some people assert that the early onset of puberty in girls in the
West is 'caused by' the soya component of food. However, Asian
girls, who eat similar or higher amounts of soy do not have early
puberty. The much simpler and more obvious explaination is that the
calorie rich Western diet both brings the body mass up to the
critical 45kg that allows the onset of menstruation much earlier,
and that the intricate glucose metabolism/sex hormone synthesis
mechanism has been made potentially partly dysfunctional by
evolutionary inappropriate dieatary composition and it's
concommitant unusual metabolic pathways (unusual compared to the
biochemical compostion of the food that was presented to our
metabolic pathways over the last million years or so) .

In a recent study menopausal women were asked to supplement their
diet with a phytoestrogen containing food - soy flour, flax seed
oil, or red clover sprouts. The soy flour and flax oil (only)
significantly prevented the vaginal mucosa from thinning and drying;
but the effect of eliminating these foods caused the mucosa to
return to the previous menopausal thinning and drying.

In yet another study, post-menopausal women with bad blood fat
profiles were split into two groups, with one group given bread and
muffins made with flax seeds, the other group foods made with
sunflower seeds. After six weeks, they switched seeds for another 6
weeks. The flaxseed lowered the 'bad' LDL cholesterol by 25 mg/dL (a
14.7% reduction) and levels of a protein called 'lipoprotein (a)',
by 0.07 mm/L. Artificial estrogen supplements lower levels of this
particular protein, 'lipoprotein (a)', but this is the first study
to demonstrate that diet can also reduce the levels, possibly due to
the weakly estrogenic lignans (according to the researchers).

The importance of this is that when estrogen levels drop off after
menopause, the increase in lipoprotein (a) (in woman eating a
western, industrial diet) oxidizes LDL cholesterol, making it more
dangerous, and increases both clotting and cholesterol deposition on
artery walls.

Other studies have found a relationship between the levels of
phytoestrogen in the blood and both 'cardiac favorable' blood fat
biochemistry and artery 'reboundability'; an indicator of arterial
health. (This relationship of better cardiac health indicators and
phytoestrogen levels in the blood was found to be independant of
both the bodies own naturally produced estrogen levels and
additional estrogen from hormone replacement therapy)

Perhaps older women were good legume gatherers in our evolutionary
past. Perhaps menopausal and older woman are biologically dependant
on external sources of estrogen - from legumes - in the same way as
males and females are dependant on vitamin C from external
sources...?

General Protective effects
Eating substantial amounts of soybeans and soybean products has been
linked to a lower incidence of breast cancer in Japanese women, and
in Japanese men, lower mortality from prostate cancer.
A recent study in USA of diet and heart disease in older women
showed that one daily serving of whole grains - as cereal or
wholegrain bread - cut the risk of death from ischemic heart disease
death by nearly a third. Eating refined grains (for example white
bread) didn't have a protective effect. When the protective effect
of fiber, phytic acid and vitamin E were factored out, there was
still a protective effect. The researchers speculate that it may be
due to an as yet undiscovered phytochemical in grains, perhaps
working together synergistically with the other protective plant
compounds and forms of vitamin E in the seed.

The most important anti-oxidant we normally think of is vitamin E.
Yet there may be other anti-oxidants in some grains that are just as
powerful. Oat flour, for example, has long been known for it's anti-
oxidant properties - to the extent it used to be used as a component
of such things as 'ready-mix' cakes, in order to slow oxidative
deterioration of the mix.

In a study where men and women ate a controlled diet, with one group
getting 1,000 calories of their daily maintainence requirements from
oats, and the other getting 1,000 calories from wheat, the people
who used oats for energy dropped their blood levels of low-density
lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL or "bad" cholesterol) by 23 mg/per
deciliter, and the wheat eaters dropped LDL by 13 mg/dL. In
addition, at the end of the six week study period, the oat eaters
lowered their systolic blood pressure by 7 millimeters of mercury,
and the wheat eaters showed a lowering of 2 mm/Hg. The reseachers
speculate that the bood chemistry improvement and lower blood
pressure are due to the soluble fibre. Oats contain more soluble
fibre than wheat. They speculate that the soluble fiber slows down
the rate of both digestion and absorbtion, slowing the release of
insulin, high rates of release of which is implicated in blood
pressure rise in some people. There may also be 'unidentified
factors' in oats which have a beneficial effect on blood vessels.

Women eating a diet that included 1.3 'servings' of 'whole grains'
had about a 30 to 40% lower risk rate of ischemic stroke, relative
to the women whose 'normal' intake was a half a serving of whole
grains per day. So boosting intake of natural grains to even one
serving per day has a powerful stroke protective effect. What
particular attribute of grains in gneral, or their effect on
metabolism, that is so helpful isn't known. But some useful chemical
constituents have been identified.

Plants contain a class of common natural chemicals
called 'Isoprenoids'. They help regulate such things as seed
germination, and plant growth. Grain seeds contain an isoprenoid
called 'gamma-tocotrienol', chemically somewhat similar to vitamin
E. Laboratory experiments on the growth of human leukemia and breast
cancer cell lines showed that the cancer lines growth was three
times slower compared to a normal human cell culture which received
the same dose of isoprenoid. The important point is that the
experiment used a dose of isoprenoids that anyone might be able to
be obtain from eating a standard natural diet.

Recent (1998) research has shown that nitric oxide in the body has a
protective effect on the integrity of the blood vessels. An amino
acid, arginine, is the main source of nitric oxide in the body.
Peanuts, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds are the richest sources of
arginine, along with meat and nuts. The arginine content of wild
legumes and nuts in the African and Asian ancestral environment has
not been reported (except for the Southern African manketti nut,
which has the highest concentration of all, with 3.5 mg/100 mg -
peanuts are the next highest with 2.8mg/100 grams). Arginine is said
to also be useful in treating some cases of 'penile hypotumescence'.
Ahem.

The natural 'phytochemicals' known as 'phenols' and 'polyphenols'
are hypothesized to be responsible for reducing the risk of cancers
in people who eat sufficient fruit and vegetables. The various kinds
of polyphenols have a variety of protective modes of action -
carcinogen compound blocking, antioxidant and free radical
scavenging, and tumour proliferation repression. While the phenols
in fruit, black tea, red wine, and vegetables are well known, few
know that in fact barley, at 1,200 to 1,500mg/100gms, and some forms
of sorghum, (at up to 10,260mg/100 grams) have by far the highest
amounts of any foods -other than dried figs (around 1,000mg per
100grams of product).

Domestication of Seeds
People are quick to seize new technologies - that is a major reason
we are so successful. So the initial wild grasses and legumes that
had already been domesticated acted as a sort of 'pre-emptive
strike' against the domestication of other perfectly edible wild
species. Once the advantages of growing these 'new technology' seeds
was apparent, wild harvesting (and thus the possibility of
domestication) of other equally promising species effectively ended.
That is why we eat dried peas, Pisum sativum, and not the equally
good, closely related species Pisum fulvum. The same effect
prevented any of the other numerous edible relatives of flax,
barley, lentils, or chickpeas being domesticated. It's not that they
weren't good enough. They just weren't first.
Domestication of seeds meant that on average, vastly more people
could live per square kilometre than if the same space was used for
gathering and hunting. Increased births resulted in pressure for
more land, more forest was cleared for seeds, and continues to be
cleared today.

'Millets'
This is a slightly dismissive term used by European colonialists to
describe predominantly African and Asian grains that Europeans
themselves didn't ordinarily eat. It includes 'common' or 'broom-
corn' millet Panicum miliaceum, the shiny seed usually fed to
budgies in the west; 'foxtail millet' Setaria viridis var. italica,
an Asian species domesticated in China for at least 2,500 years and
used in the west primarily as 'millet sprays' for your budgie cage
(a native middle Americas species, S. parviflora, was almost
domesticated by 3,500 years ago, but was abandoned as maize
emerged) ; 'Japanese millet' Echinochloa frumentacea a very fast
maturing grass seed widespread in many climatic zones of South East
Asia; but not much now used; 'pearl' or 'bulrush millet' Pennisetum
typhoides a white seeded millet on a bulrush-like head, which,
unlike bulrushes, is adapted to semi arid areas and probably
originated in the Sudan or immediate sub Saharan Africa ; 'finger
millet' Eleusine coracana, a species native to tropical east Africa,
is a short stemmed, dry land adapted, millet with excellent storage
characteristics and an outstanding mineral content, and is still a
staple in parts of central and eastern Africa; and 'sorghum' Sorghum
bicolor, from Ethiopia a relatively large seeded drought resistant
millet that doesn't keep well. It was probably domesticated in
Ethiopia or Central Africa, initially maybe around 5,000 years ago,
and carried to West Africa, perhaps 3,000 years ago, where it was
further developed by the Mande people, especially the high quality
white seeded forms (red grained types are bitter).

Various species of Panicum, or 'panic' grasses, are indiginous to
Africa. In South East Africa, possibly the cradle of the human
species, there are at least seven species- Panicum aequinerve, P.
deustum, P. ecklonii, P. hymeniochilum, P. maximum,
P. natalense, and P. subalbidum. Westerners who chose to eat a
primarily grain and seed based diet consider Panicum the most
digestible of all seeds, and the best suited to human nutrition.
Given our long evolutionary association with this grass seed, it is
not suprising.

'Millet' farming has been dated to 7,500 years ago in Northern
China, so it seems likely that consumption of wild millets has been
going on for many millenia prior to that date in Asia.

These grains are primarily dry-land adapted, are generally low
yielding, but very tough. They don't have the high productivity of
temperate grains such as wheat, and are much smaller seeded (except
for sorghum). But they make life possible in drought prone,
difficult areas.

Presumably Europeans don't eat millet because it has no gluten and
can't be made into a bread.

Finger Millet, Eleusine coracana - A very good page covering the
origin, distribution, nutrient analysis, ecology and more.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Eleusine_coracana.html

Finger Millet, Eleusine coracana - an online re-presentation of the
section on finger millet in 'Lost Crops of Africa: Volume I:
Grains' (1996), including an outline drawing of the seeding plant.
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309049903/html/38.html

Foxtail millets, Setaria sp. - an Iowa State University page on
their weed potential also has put up good photographs of the seed
heads-foxtail millet S. viridis var. Italica; yellow foxtail S.
glauca; knotweed, S. parviflora; giant foxtail S. faberi ; and
Bristly foxtail
S. verticillata
http://www.agron.iastate.edu/~weeds/Ag317-99/id/WeedID/Ffox.html

JoAnn Guest
mrsjo-%40speakeasy.net">mrsjo-speakeasy.net
www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/

Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic

.