Read full article By B & B Admin @ B & B Organics Photo Credit: B & B Organics
Transform the lifestyle?
Some of us want to lose weight, some of us are suffering from heart problems that require us to find better alternatives to our current food products and maybe some of us, just want to eat healthier. But all around us we find solutions to these problems in expensive and processed-food rich products. These are not viable solutions. What if there was one such crop that helped in all these problems? All of us would rush to buy it, Won’t we? What if it was a crop you have seen and heard about all your life? Is there really such a crop?
Yes, there is! Millets, the answer to a lot of problems, yet no one knows about them.
What are Millets?
Millets are a variety of small-seeded grasses grown as cereal crops in semi-arid regions of the world, mostly in developing countries like India, Mali, Niger etc where it also serves as human food. In developed countries, they are used as fodder and thus many countries are following suit and ignoring the immense nutritional value millets bring to the table.
There are over 15 types of millets that are grown all over the world and many of them are named after the place they are indigenous to. Evidences have been found by palaeoethnobotanists that suggest that Millets were being consumed 7000 years ago too and were even more popular than rice itself!
So what makes millets so special? The answer is pretty simple. Millets are easy to grow, are tolerant of drought as they don’t require much water to cultivate as compared to their western counterparts, they are immensely rich in nutrients, have a lot of scientifically proven benefits and, most importantly, taste quite good.
Now, the question that arises in one’s mind is that if millets have so many benefits and are relatively easier to grow, why aren’t they popular already?
Millets, since the pre-historic times, were grown in tropic, semi-arid and hot weather regions of the world like parts of Africa and Asia. These were also the places that were colonized and lost a vast amount of their heritage and culture due to that. Moreover, the effect of western culture and the need to adopt it is quite predominant in these places. Hence, Millets became a long lost, poor-man’s crop amidst the more famous and supposedly “better” western crops like Quinoa and Oats. Not only this, Millets’ unpopularity can also be pinned on the very fact that there is no awareness regarding the “wonder crop” which in turn is because of low demand in the market. This is a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
But how?
Why are Millets so good?
The first step towards bringing millets back into everyone’s everyday diet is to first educate oneself and then others, as to why millets are good for us.
Taking one look at the numbers we find that, In a 100g raw serving of millets we get 378 kcal, 4.2 g fat, 73g carbohydrates, 11g protein, 195 mg Potassium, 5 mg Sodium, 16% iron, 20% Vitamin B6 and 28% Magnesium. So how do all these help us?
Millets help to fight Diabetes
We just saw that millets have 28% magnesium. Magnesium helps in processing starch in our body. They also have low glycemic index. Thereby, significantly preventing the risk of diabetes and controlling amount of insulin in our body.
