Chia Seeds - Fitness Superfood #12 | LiveLeanTV

Chia Seeds 101: The nutrient packed seed full of Omega-3s! In today's episode, lets talk about all the fitness and nutrition benefits of chia seeds.

This is the final day in our 12 day series showcasing the top 12 superfoods to help you with your fitness and nutrition goals.

Over the past few years, chia seeds have become a very popular food in the health industry. These nutrient dense seeds are packed full of essential omega-3 fats, fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

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Chia seeds are also easily digested and can be consumed in many different ways.

Chia seeds are loaded with Omega-3s:

One of the biggest nutrition benefits of chia seeds comes from the amount of alpha lipoid acid (ALA), which is an omega-3 fatty acid. Today's ratio of inflammation causing omega-6s to omega-3s is typically way out of proportion.

Based on the standard American diet, the ratio is close to a 20 to 1 ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s. A healthy ratio is closer to a 2:1 omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Optimally it would be a 1:1 ratio.

That's one of the big nutrition benefits of chia seeds. They contain an excellent 3:1 ratio of healthy omega-3 fats to omega-6 fats. This makes it an excellent food to help balance out the ratio of fats in your diet.

Omega-3s are great for brain and heart health. They may help reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease by:
- lowering blood pressure
- lowering bad cholesterol
- reducing inflammation

Chia seeds are packed full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. This includes vitamin A, B, D, and E. They also contain a wide variety of minerals and antioxidants.

These minerals include: manganese, phosphorus, calcium, zinc, copper, and potassium.

This potent combination of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants helps improve skin health and reduce aging.

Chia seeds are loaded with fiber. High fiber foods are great for gut health and keeping your regular. The combination of fiber and healthy fat, also helps slow the breakdown of carbohydrates in your system.

This helps balance blood sugar and insulin levels. Another benefit of the high fiber is it helps keep you feeling full, thus reducing hunger, and helping with weight loss. Seeds like flax seeds and chia seeds also may help reduce belly fat because they promote the metabolism of estrogen from the body.

How To Eat Chia SeedsL Chia seeds are a very versatile food which makes it easy to add more of these essential fatty acids to your
diet.

The best way to absorb all the nutrients is by either soaking them for 30 minutes in water or grinding them up. I love adding them to smoothies as well as fighting off late night cravings by making chia seed pudding.

Not only do they add a ton of nutrients to salads, they’re also great to add to smoothies since they are excellent at thickening your shake. You can find chia seeds in most grocery stores in the bulk or baking section.

If you can't find them you can replace them with another comparable super healthy seed, flax seeds.

That's it for the top 12 fitness superfood series.

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Chia Seeds - Fitness Superfood #12 | LiveLeanTV

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[LiveLeanTV]

you're welcome...they should be in everyone's diet as we all need more omega 3s

[TheSproutarian]

Sprouting it into greens is the best way. Makes the omega 3's 36 times more available to the body. l have a large tray a day (4 tablespoons sprouted into greens makes a large tray)...enough to fill almost a three liter container with the chia greens, and l have them with sesame seed sprouts or nut sprouts. Getting good amounts of omega 3's is very very important and beneficial, l should know.

[marcustrelle]

Make sure you eat them soaked though as a man nearly died once by eating them dry and then drinking a glass of water which caused them to expand and block his esophagus.

[mrsj]

Wow I did not know about the chia seed, you ever try hemp seed? Thank you so much for the info 😊