Poppy Seeds

Do you ever use poppy seeds at home? They’re fun and surprisingly tasty for their tiny size, and we will learn that they hold some great nutritional properties as well. Check this out!

So tiny, yet so full of nutrition.

There are many beautiful poppy plant variants, and they have been used as natural remedies by many people around the world, but the opium poppy is the one that gives us poppy seeds that we can use in baking and also in other ways in our food.

You’ve probably seen them on top of loaves of bread or bagels, if you haven’t used them yourself already. These tiny seeds, though decorative and tasty, might not have been something you considered as super healthy or useful in a nutritious way. But you’ll learn that this is far from the case today!

Poppy seeds are rich in nutrients - particularly manganese (one tablespoon provides about 26% of our daily intake, though keep in mind that a tablespoon of poppy seeds is quite a lot!). Manganese is great for bone health, blood sugar regulation, metabolising carbohydrates, and prevent blood clotting! They also contain, iron, zinc, calcium and copper, as well as fibre, fat and protein. It’s almost crazy to think that there’s anything nutritious in something as tiny as these seeds, but there you go!

As poppy seeds contain a lot of healthy fats, you can also get poppy seed oil, which can be used as a cooking oil but is maybe more commonly found as an ingredient in beauty products. The unsaturated fats can be helpful for the prevention of heart diseases like stroke and heart attack. Poppy seed oil is rich in omega 6, which is beneficial for our bodies but only up to a point (you want a good omega 6 to omega 3 ratio). However, for most of us with a fairly limited consumption of both poppy seeds and the oil, this is unlikely to be a concern!

As I mentioned above, getting enough of your recommended daily intake of manganese or any of the other great nutrients from poppy seeds alone will perhaps be a struggle, but as we learn about all these different great nuts, seeds and legumes that provide similar nutrients, we can combine them in our cooking in a really nice way. And you can confidently dunk your bagels in these seeds as topping before you pop(py) them in the oven!

And I’m going to leave you with a bit of a random fact; there is apparently some research that indicates that having “products derived from poppy seed oil” flushed through your fallopian tubes can increase fertility!

Do you like poppy seeds? How do you cook or bake with them? Message me on Instagram @TheFromScratchBody!

Sources: Healthline and PubMed.Gov