Health Journal Online

Tag: Grain

  • Is Millet a Nutritious Grain? 

    Is Millet a Nutritious Grain? 

    Millet isn’t the name of a specific grain, but a generic term that applies to a number of totally different plants. Which is the most healthful

    “Millets are highly nutritious but vastly ignored as a main source of food primarily due to lack of awareness.” Have you heard of ancient grains? Millets aren’t messing around. Arguably, they are the first grains cultivated by humankind—dating back not only 5,000 years, but maybe 10,000.

    Why millets and not just millet? I had no idea that “millet” wasn’t the name of a specific grain. In fact, millet is a generic term that doesn’t just apply to different species but to a number of totally different plants. There are “major and minor millets,” pearl millet, which is what most people think of as millet, and also proso, foxtail, and finger millets, which are all completely different grains. Although they look similar, they aren’t the same, as you can see below and at 1:05 in my video Studies on Millet Nutrition: Is It a Healthy Grain?.

    Fiber is one of the main things we look for in whole grain, and Kodo millet’s fiber content is off the charts. But, compared to other grains, finger and foxtail millets also beat out the bunch. Note, though, that pearl millet (the one most people think of as millet) is really on the low side. But looking at the polyphenol content, even plain millet beats out the other grains, including sorghum, which I previously hyped for how much polyphenol it contains. But, again, Kodo millet seems to win the day, as you can see below and at 1:39 in my video. 

    When it comes to total antioxidants, though, Kodo and finger millets are comparably high, as shown here and at 1:43.

    When it comes to nutrition, finger millet is said to have eight times more calcium than other grains, but, to me, it looks like it has ten times the calcium. It’s just off the charts, as you can see here and at 1:55 in my video. 

    It also has three times as much calcium as milk. Some of the millets are exceptionally high in iron too. Regular millet is high, but barnyard millet has about five times more iron than steak. 

    So, it’s nutritious, but what about specific potential health benefits? In the medical literature, you can read statements like: Millets “may prevent cardiovascular disease by reducing plasma triglycerides in hyperlipidemic rats.” But who cares whether food reduces cardiovascular disease in rodents except for those with pet rats or mice?

    An epidemiological study in China found lower esophageal cancer mortality rates in areas where residents ate more millet and sorghum, compared to corn and wheat. That may have been due more to avoiding a contaminating carcinogenic fungus than to the benefits of millet itself, though. Studies have shown that millets may be effective against cancer cell proliferation in a petri dish, with Kodo and proso millets rapidly inhibiting cancer cell growth, compared to pearl or foxtail millet, as shown below and at 3:02 in my video, knocking down the growth of cancer cells, but leaving normal cells alone. Also, millets were found to reduce the growth of colon cancer cells, human breast cancer cells, and human liver cancer cells, and also potentially help to prevent metastases by inhibiting cancer cell migration. My patients are neither pets nor petri dishes, though, and to date, there have been no clinical cancer trials with millet. 

    Are there any unique health-promoting attributes? Some know finger millet for its health benefits, such as lowering blood sugar and cholesterol and having anti-ulcer characteristics, but the anti-ulcer study researchers cite just notes that some of the areas with a low incidence of ulcers also happened to be regions where residents eat millet, as shown here and at 3:49 in my video, and that’s far from establishing cause-and-effect. 

    And the cholesterol-lowering study cited? It explores what happens when you take tail tendons from rats and soak them in sugar and millet! The blood-sugar-lowering benefits are legitimate, though. “Apart from the fact that millets do not contain gluten,” which is good for the 1 or 2 percent of people who have celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, “millets can also be exploited in the management of type II diabetes due to their hypoglycemic [blood-sugar-lowering] property, as reported by several studies on millets and millet-based foods”—done with actual people, which we’ll cover next. 

    Isn’t it mind-blowing that millet isn’t actually a grain but a generic term? I learn something new every day—and make videos about it for you.

    I have a few millet recipes in The How Not to Diet Cookbook, including Millet Risotto with Mushrooms, White Beans, and Spinach. Find it at your local library or wherever you get your books. (As always, all proceeds from my books are donated to charity.) You can also substitute millet for the barley and/or rye in my Basic BROL Bowl.

    This is part of an extended series, which includes another three videos listed in the related posts below. 



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  • Is Sorghum a Healthy Grain? 

    Is Sorghum a Healthy Grain? 

    How does sorghum compare with other grains in terms of protein, antioxidants, and micronutrients? And the benefits of red sorghum compared to black and white varieties?

    Sorghum is “the Forgotten Grain.” The United States is the top producer of sorghum, “but it is typically not used to produce food for American consumers.” Instead, it’s used mainly “to produce livestock feed, pet foods, household building materials…but it is a preferred grain for human diets in other parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia.” There, it’s been a staple and eaten for thousands of years, making it currently the fifth most popular grain grown after wheat, corn, rice, and barley, beating out oats and rye.

    Because sorghum is gluten-free and “can be definitively considered safe for consumption by people with celiac disease,” we’re starting to see it “increasingly used” as actual human food in the United States, so I decided to look into just how healthy it might be. As you can see below and at 0:59 in my video Is Sorghum a Healthy Grain?, it is comparable to other grains when it comes to protein. 

    Since when do we have to worry about getting enough protein, though? Fiber is what Americans are desperately deficient in, and sorghum does pull towards the front of the pack, as seen here and at 1:06 in my video.

    The micronutrient composition is relatively “unremarkable, relative to other cereal grains.” As shown below and at 1:15 in my video, you can see how it rates on minerals, for example. 

    Where sorghum shines is its polyphenol content. Polyphenols are plant compounds and “their regular consumption has been associated with a reduced risk of a number of chronic diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and neurodegenerative disorders.” It’s also been shown to have “a protective effect…on all-cause mortality.” If you compare different grains, sorghum really does pull ahead, helping to explain why its antioxidant power is so much higher, as seen here and at 1:40 in my video. 

    Now, sorghum gets its grainy butt kicked by fruits and vegetables, but when compared to other grains, a sorghum-based breakfast cereal, for example, might have about eight times the antioxidants than a whole wheat-based one. What we care about, though, isn’t antioxidant activity in a test tube, but antioxidant activity within our body.

    If you measure the antioxidant capacity of your blood after eating regular pasta, it goes up a little. If you replace 30 percent of the wheat flour with sorghum flour, it doesn’t go up much higher. But, if you eat 30 percent red sorghum flour pasta, the antioxidant capacity in your bloodstream shoots up about 15-fold, as seen below and at 2:22 in my video. 

    Red sorghum? Yes. In fact, there are multiple types of sorghum—such as black sorghum, white sorghum, and red sorghum. Below and at 2:31 in my video is how they look in grain form (including yellow sorghum). 

    Red sorghum and especially black sorghum have extremely high antioxidant activity, comparable to fruits and vegetables, as seen here and at 2:41. 

    The problem is I can’t find any of the colored sorghum varieties. I can go online and buy red or black rice, purple, blue, or red popping corn, and purple or black barley, but red or black sorghum can be harder to find. White sorghum is widely available for about four dollars a pound, though. Does it have any “unique nutritional and health-promoting attributes”? It’s promoted as “An Underutilized Cereal Whole Grain with the Potential to Assist in the Prevention of Chronic Disease,” according to a study title, but what is the “effect of sorghum consumption on health outcomes”?

    As you can see below and at 3:20 in my video, an epidemiological study in China found lower esophageal cancer mortality rates in areas where more millet and sorghum were eaten, compared to corn and wheat, but that may have been due more to avoiding fungal contamination of corn than from any benefit of sorghum itself. Though, it’s possible. “Oats are the only source of avenanthramides,” which give oats some unique health benefits. Similarly, sorghum, even white sorghum, contains unique pigments known as 3-deoxyanthocyanins, which are strong inducers of some of the detoxifying enzymes in our liver and can inhibit the growth of human cancer cells growing in a petri dish, compared to red cabbage, for instance, which just has regular anthocyanin pigments. White sorghum didn’t do much worse than red or black varieties, which have way more of the unique 3-deoxyanthocyanins, so it may just be a general sorghum effect. You don’t know until you put it to the test.

    Researchers found that sorghum suppresses tumor growth and metastasis in human breast cancer xenografts. What does that mean? They concluded that sorghum could be used as “an inexpensive natural cancer therapy, without any side effects. We strongly recommend the use of [sorghum] as an edible therapeutic agent as it possesses tumor suppression, migration inhibition, and anti-metastatic effects on breast cancer” for humans. However, xenograft means human breast cancer implanted in a mouse. Yes, the human tumors grew more slowly in the mice-fed sorghum extracts and blocked metastasis to the lung. Yes, sorghum did the same for human colon cancer that, again, was in mice, but that can’t necessarily be translated to how human cancers would grow in humans, since not only do these mice not have a human immune system, they hardly have any immune system at all. They’re bred without a thymus gland, which is where cancer-fighting immunity largely originates. I mean, how else could you keep the mouse’s immune system from rejecting the human tissue outright? But this immunosuppression makes these kinds of mouse models that much more artificial—and that much more difficult to extrapolate to humans.

    And that’s a lot of what we see in the sorghum literature—in vitro data from test tubes and petri dishes, and data from rats and mice. There has been “a critical missing piece of the puzzle” needed to link laboratory data to actual benefits in humans. Missing, that is, until now. Thankfully, we now have human interventional studies, which we’ll explore next.

    Stay tuned for The Health Benefits of Sorghum.

    Should we all be seeking gluten-free grains? See related posts below. 



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