Some Flax Facts

Want some fast flax facts? How’s that for a mouthful? The tiny flax seed is packed full of all kinds of health benefits. Flax is considered a powerful food and is on most superfoods lists. I’ve started adding it to salads and oatmeal and it has a nice, nutty taste. I also buy multigrain bread and multigrain bagels with flax seeds which tastes great toasted! I’ve seen many juices available with flaxseed oil as well to help increase the Omega 3 and Omega 6 content of foods. It’s important to get the omegas in your diet and flax is a great way to do that since many people haven’t been able to get in recent years due to the decline in fish as part of the staple diet. I try to use them both in ground and whole form. It’s important to note that most of the health benefits won’t happen unless you have them ground or chewed. Flax is cheap to buy and abundantly available and when using whole seeds I do try to chew them despite their tiny size so that they don’t simply exit my body without letting me get some of the benefits beyond help for digestive cleansing. You can chop them in the food processor, blender or coffee grinder yourself to add in recipes.

Here are a few of the benefits I’ve found for flax:

-Great for constipation.
-help symptoms of asthma
-anti-inflammatory properties so helpful with aches and pains
-Great for your mood
-protection against disease such as heart disease and cancer
-high antioxidant levels
-high in omega 3 alpha linoleic acid
-high in omega 6
-fights high cholesterol
-low on the glycemic index
-high fibre
-a source of polyunsaturated oils
-high protein

Increasing your good fats and eating as many superfoods as you can will benefit your health in many ways.