Beware the Miracle Foods Fads

Can you tell me what you think of the nutritional or medicinal value of Chia seeds?

Sheila

I shall tell you about Chia what i tell everyone about 'miracle foods': Noni juice, Kombucha tea, Goji Berries, Chia seeds...

The only thing they have in common is that some greedy capitalists do excellent marketing on those 'healing foods'. People buy them in earnest for a lot of money and then after a while, when they realise that they didn't get the miracles they were expecting, they give up.

Meanwhile, the sharks have another product ready to market and it's alway the same: has been used for thousands of years by the ancients Aztecs/ Polynesians/ Egyptians/ Eskimos; has everything: protein/antioxidants/ omegas. They seem to always contain high levels of the nutrients currently fashionable in the popular media: so while Goji berries were touted to be full of antioxidants, Chia are full of omegas, and so on.

Let me give you an example: a couple of years ago Goji berries were sold for about $100 for a 100mls bottle of extract in fancy packaging in health food shops. Now you can buy them loose for $20 / kilo in supermarkets!

See what i mean? Next year people will feed Chia seeds to their chickens (just like the Aztec did actually).

This is the sort of things that give natural therapies a bad name. All whole foods are good for you: blueberries will give you more antioxidants than Goji berries, organic wholemeal bread is certainly better for you than white bread made with bleached flour 'enriched' with Chia seeds or any other ancient just discovered ingredient.

So beware the miracle cure. Again!