Around the seeds are a lot of controversy: someone considers them very useful, others argue that they are harmful. In fact, perhaps, like any product, the seeds have their positive and negative sides.
Seeds - useful properties
Many seeds that we love to eat alone or as additives to various dishes, bring to our body a whole range of useful substances - minerals, vitamins and unsaturated fatty acids.
- Fat-soluble vitamins A and E, contained in virtually all seeds, are fairly well assimilated due to the presence of fats in the seeds. Being antioxidants, these vitamins slow down the aging process and accelerate metabolism. As a pleasant bonus, they transform hair and skin.
- Vegetable oils - that's how useful seeds are among other things. They carry "good" fats, which reduce the level of "harmful" cholesterol in the blood, so they are useful in atherosclerotic processes.
- Seeds also contain many minerals. Calcium and magnesium are necessary for the normal functioning of the cardiovascular system, iron (especially a lot of it in pumpkin seeds) protects against anemia, iodine does not allow hypothyroidism to develop, fluoride provides strong, healthy teeth and bones, and without zinc it is impossible to maintain a full-fledged immune defense and provide vascular strength .
- Some of the seeds contain specific substances, for example, flax seeds - sources of phytoestrogens - plant hormones that help women normalize the hormonal background.
So, including in your diet various seeds, including always available sunflower seeds, you can improve the body's condition, saturate it with vitamins and minerals, improve metabolic processes. After a few weeks, there will be noticeable improvements in hair and skin, as well as general well-being.
What is harmful seeds?
Do not forget that the seeds have a high enough energy value. The same sunflower seeds in a hundred grams contain a little more than 500 calories, which is quite a lot. Therefore, if in addition to the usual food you eat a handful of sunflower seeds, not including them in daily caloric content, you consume "hidden" calories, which will cause excess kilograms in the future. In addition, the seeds contain fats, and their excessive consumption - this is an additional burden on the pancreas and liver. And one more unpleasant circumstance is that it is bad for the enamel to gnaw the seed peel with teeth, as many do.
But the question of whether it is possible to eat with a diet seeds, many nutritionists, however, give an affirmative answer, because in these grains are many useful substances. Especially they save in winter and spring, when we consume insufficient fruits and vegetables and suffer from hypovitaminosis . However, seeds with weight loss should be eaten in small quantities.
Some recommendations on the use of seeds:
- seeds that had a skin, but were cleaned, contain an order of magnitude less useful substances;
- also less useful seeds makes roasting, so it's best to eat only dried seeds;
- Eat 100 grams of sunflower seeds (about half a glass) a week enough to improve metabolism and your well-being, but do not harm the process of losing weight;
- it is best to add seeds to various dishes - whole grains, light salads or soups.
In all important measures, even if you eat seeds, the benefits and harm from them can predominate, depending on the number of eaten seeds, which for many seem completely harmless.