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Do you crave a big bucket of popcorn when you go to the movies? How about at home when you fire up your DVD player to watch a late-night flick with your sweetie?
As it turns out, popcorn is one of the healthiest snacks you can eat (far healthier than the much-touted edamame) and polyphenols are the reason why.
Polyphenols are a type of chemical found in plant foods that help neutralize free radicals, those nasty little baddies that damage your cells and contribute to rapid aging.
Popcorn has one of the highest levels of polyphenols of any plant food – including most fruit!
According to Joe Vinson, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at the University of Scranton:
“Popcorn has more antioxidants in total than other snack foods that you can consume and it also has quite a bit of fiber.”
While the fiber aspect of popcorn is not particularly impressive to me as fiber is not necessarily a good thing in large quantities (people just need so much of it as they are typically so constipated from their lousy diets), the polyphenol aspect of the research is indeed compelling and should encourage folks to fire up that popcorn maker more often.
Don’t Buy Microwave or Processed Popcorn
As with any food, preparation and sourcing are critical, so don’t run out to the supermarket and load up on microwave popcorn after reading this post. It also would be wise to avoid popcorn at the movies as the synthetic factory fats and processed salt used to flavor the popcorn is less than ideal and overrides any benefit of the popcorn itself!
One other type of popcorn to skip: popcorn in snack bags specifically packaged for lunchboxes which are loaded with all manner of chemicals and synthetics for flavoring and coloring.
The healthiest popcorn is made yourself the old fashioned way on the stovetop. Popcorn makers are ok too, but in my experience, the stove is just as fast and easy with less cleanup. Popcorn is so cheap, most people will find that a nice big bag of organic kernels easily fits into even the tightest of food budgets.
The best oils to cook your popcorn in include homemade ghee or a quality brand of expeller-pressed coconut oil.
After popping, sprinkle with a good quality sea salt to complete your delicious and healthful snack. Some folks I know sprinkle with nutritional yeast powder for a nice boost of B vitamins.
Even though homemade popcorn is a fantastic and healthy snack choice, don’t overdo it. Corn that is not soaked or sprouted prior to cooking contains anti-nutrients that can inflame digestion if consumed to excess.
By the way, if someone in your family is allergic to corn, try popped sorghum. It looks and tastes the same, just smaller kernels.
How to Make Stovetop Popcorn (Video)
Below is a video I filmed for the Weston A. Price Foundation on Healthy Snacks. Click here for a transcript if you don’t prefer videos. The video includes a segment on making healthy popcorn. This visual can be helpful if you’ve never made it on the stovetop before. This is the healthiest way to enjoy it!
Organic, preferably heirloom corn kernels popped on the stovetop is a great snack to pack in your children’s lunchboxes. It is very affordable and you can feel good about making it!
Source: Study: The Snack Loaded with Antioxidants
i don’t eat much of it, because of the yeast issue, however, we did plant organic popcorn in our garden this past spring (just put the organic kernels that you would pop on the stove and ta-da!), and it was THE BEST popcorn i’ve ever eaten. the kernels were a dark orange color and sweet/nutty tasting, and we had the added benefit of knowing exactly what was in the organic compost that we fed it with. my six year old son planted it as his summer project, and was so proud of himself when he got to harvest it. i don’t think he’s ever enjoyed a treat so much as when he had his first bowl of homegrown popcorn with organic butter and sea salt. 🙂
Sara Jan, you may be allergic…how are you with wheat?
85% OF all corn is GMO, only USDA ORGANIC IS OK, they have proven that the GMO’s and pesticides are lowering men’s sperm counts and testosterone, 50% lower than in the 1950’s …we dont know the effects to women yet but …..corn is a big allergen for lots of people..mostly cause its altered….
Also there is an epidemic of stillborn cattle and GMOs are linked to that. Some scientists who have found this out have been dismissed from their research institutes.
Recently I was in line behind a pregnant girl opting out of being scanned at the airport. She said TSA had told her the machine was ‘safe’, but then she went on to say, “I already had two miscarrages and I want to do everything to avoid another one.” Two miscarrages under the age of 25…..so young?
One renown midwife who works in Bali has described a dramatic increase in low birthweight babies and stillborns due to malformed embillical cords. GMO corn was
introduced to Bali eight years ago.
This may seem like a stupid question, but is there a certain way you have to soak the corn for popcorn, or can you just soak it in the lime water a couple hours and then just let it air dry out for a while?
Sarah says in her video that popcorn is not soaked or sprouted and for that reason should be eaten only occasionally.
Darn.
Corn feeds yeast. With a yeast epidemic, you might want to be careful with eating too much. We used to have air popped popcorn all the time. Could never figure out why my son’s bowel movements would be horrid smelling and messy. Then we stopped eating it and it got better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xThSnJb8miQ&feature=related
I LOVE popcorn and over the last few months have been hearing about how it’s actually a great food! I love that my favorite snack is really good for me. 🙂
You MUST try adding Nutritional Yeast to your popcorn. Delicious cheesy flavor and so healthy!
I second this! I have hippie parents and at least once a week growing up we’d pop several batches of popcorn in the wok, and top it with melted butter, salt and Nutritional Yeast!!! We would make enough to snack on for days afterward. It’s SO yummy. Now all of us kids have converted our spouses and children… I went to my 9yr old nephews birthday party and what did my sister-in-law have for a snack… Popcorn w/Nutritional Yeast, butter and salt!
My husband and I prefer to pop our popcorn in coconut oil(although, I’d like to try my homemade lard), and we’ll even mix more coconut oil in with the melted butter to pour on top because it’s so yummy!
Supposedly there is no GMO popping corn currently available….
Not true. You have to get Organic from a good source.
We love popcorn as a healthy snack and my kids love it with nutritional yeast sprinkled on it.
We need to redefine the word “healthy”. To me healthy implies fully intact nutrient molecules – C20 H30 O is the intact molecule for Vitamin A – Any snack that was processed (which can include popping corn) has so many nutrient molecules damaged. All of the protein in the yeast was deactivated which means it is no longer bio active – no longer bio available to your body.
A damaged or “deactivated” nutrient molecule, or any molecule, is not available to do anything. Oliver Leslie
Oliver:
According to Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, authors of “Nourishing Traditions” and “Eat Fat Lose Fat”, nutritional yeast is a super food with almost all forms of vitamin B except B12. It is also an excellent source of minerals such as Chromium. She advises that you look for nutritional yeast that has been processed at low temperatures which avoids the creation of MSG. She suggests Frontier brand.
I am not familiar with the two folk you mentioned. are they chemists? Did they refer (or defer) to chemists? It will always be in the chemistry where the truth lies. Marketing can cloud certain chemical realities ( and the lay person wouldn’t know the diference).
Yeast can be a “super food” ( another popular marketing term), but that requires that there is zero processing. Nutritional yeast is deactivated by heat – that means it was hot enough to do irreversible damage to the nutrient molecules (proteins are molecules). Once something is deactivated, it is deactivated – it can’t turn back on once inside the body. proteins are fragile and degrade all the time.
PS I forgot to add that minerals are in fact “hardier” than vitamins and proteins in that they are not molecules. They are singular atoms, sole chemical elements; Iron (Fe), Calcium etc. They can be clusters of same but will only break down into themselves – salt will breakdown only to salt – iron to iron.
However, minerals can easliy leach from their host plant or animal in the cooking process – drink the water u steamed your spinach in. Oliver leslie
Um…yeasts are deactivated only when they’re subjected to a certain temperature–usually between 110-125 degrees (depends on the strain of yeast). Low temperature processing for nutritional yeast is well below this temperature. They are simply dehydrated, not killed off.
You may be having a love affair with chemistry, but I’ve got an educational background in microbiology. My knowledge trumps yours!
Oliver a quick search would tell you that Mary Enig has a Phd in Nutritional Sciences and was a faculty research associate in the dept of chemistry and biochemistry at UMCP. I think she has the credentials.
Roxanne – go to your lab, deactivate a protein or some yeast, and then swallow it and see if it is still bio active – biologically available. As you might know, u can’t do this – we don’t have the technology to see what happens inside the body – we can see in a test tube what happens – so in the tube see if deactivated yeast can do any thing.
See if beer makers want deactivated yeast – no – it’s useless. People always forget or ignore the “de” in things; devalued, degraded, defunct, demoted, denatured – de dead, de useless…
We kill many bacteria etc at the temps u mentioned – even lower temps can do it – pasturization is lower and still effective enough to make moot whatever it is they want to make a “DE”.
SO cal gal
I googled Sally. I have also had many talks with the leading american schools of nutritional science, both online and on the phone. Not one of those schools has a course on nutrient damage – not one.
There is no mention of nutrient damage in any of their courses (through out america). and when I say nutrient damage, i mean from a molecular perspective. And to study nutrient damage from a molecular perspective, which is the only way one can study nutrient molecules, you need to have the instruments in which to do so.
The last conversation i had was with the one of the heads of one of these schools – they didn’t know what tools were used to study nutrient damage – They didn’t know what mass spectrometry was or Western Blot, or any other means of studying nutrient molecules (proteins and amino acids in particular). They also had little if any knowledge of the chemical makeup of many if not all the nutrients in the spectrum – one would think this is critical to talking about nutrition.
I am currently involved with bridghing the gap between what these nutrition schools no and are teaching, with a curriculum that includes at least a base understanding of what certain criteria can impact (put stress upon) various nutrient molecules. Vitamin C for instance is affected by light, heat, oxygen, and a host of other variables. The juice from a fresh bit apple is difeerent from apple juice in your jar – that is a chemical reaction caused by light and oxygen – that chemical reaction is a chemical change – the molecules have changed.
It is this molecular understanding that we need to incorporate in to the food eating and healthy eating narrative – if you notice by my posts on this and other threads.
Oliver: If you don’t know who these two ladies are then you are on the wrong blog, lol. Sally Fallon is the president of the Weston A Price Foundation (WAPF). Mary Enig is the past president of WAPF and she has a Ph.D. in nutrition. Sarah Pope, AKA the Healthy Home Economist, is on their board of directors. If you disagree with these ladies, then maybe you should go visit another blog.
Roxanne is correct in what she said about how nutritional yeast should be processed. That is why Sally recommended the Frontier brand.
Oliver I am happy to hear that you are actively researching better nutrition. The more that do so the better. But it is your attitude of I’m the only one that has all the answers is what I’m guessing most on this blog find irritating. Instead of joining in in the spirit of learning you attack anyone who you disagree with. I am also guessing that most on this blog understand that, as you put it, “certain criteria can impact (put stress upon) various nutrient molecules,” it is why we are here because we know that processing of food damages nutrients.
You may scoff at Mary’s credentials as a nutritionist but I hold it in high reguards. Not only has she this education but her research work, as I pointed out, was in chemistry and biochemistry, the realm you are lauding. So she has incorporated molecular understanding, “into the food eating and healthy eating narrative.”
I have a biology background but I will be the first to admit that I am not a source for such information but I am an intelligent person, I know how to research and read research. I also believe observational evidence is important. I may be way off here but based on observational evidence I do know that the dry yeast I used to use to make bread wasn’t deactivated by the process. Could it be a good nutritional yeast is produced that same way?
My advice to you is to enter into discussions with respect for others in an effort to share what you have learned. I think it will be read and considered much more seriously that way.
Blair – My girlfriend is a nutritionist as well as two of my dear friends. My girlfriend however, ackowledges that she knows zip about nutrient damage. She knows nothing about moulecules and how they are effected or anything.
The truth will always be in the chemistry. It doesn’t matter what creditials one has in an industry created by the food and health peoples, you should still know your chemistry. It also doesn’t matter how famous someone is at what they do – that doesn’t speak always to what they know or what they don’t know.
Pfizer knows a great deal – do you think they don’t harm people with half of their products? They too are “qualified” and experienced. So too are the people at pepsi and Marlboro.
What people have to realise (or not) is that the point of cooking is to create a molecular change – for color, texture, tatse, smell, shape, size, and a host of other reason we cook or marinate stuff – even marinating is a singular process having to do with creating a molecular change. Putting lemons on raw meat or fish can “cook” it by simply creating a molecular change to the proteins. The acid degrades the proteins.
99 percent of what we do in the kitchen has to do with changing molecules – we forget however that nutrients, vitamins and proteins etc, are molecules. When we fry an egg we change everything about it – it’s shape, size, smell, look, feel, texture, taste, etc – these are all molecular changes (irreversible ones at that). So we are led to believe by food science and marketing that all of these molecular changes have occured, but the molecules that are the nutrients have not changed – that they are somehow impervious to heat or acids or light and oxygen or many other things that happen in the kitchen.
I love an omellete as much as the next person, but i don’t kid myself for one second about it’s nutrient value. I get, everyday, my nutrients (proteins, fats, carbs, vitamins, minerals) from nuts, salads (spinach etc), fruits, veggies (uncooked), seeds, sashemi (both the beef and the fish ones etc).
So cal
I have not attacked anyone here. I have been pleasant and responded to everyone in kind – even the one who called me clueless – I didn’t respond to her with any vitriol.
I am no different from anyone here in saying and sharing what i know with others. I learn a great deal from these forums – I can also teach as well. The original post was intended to inform (teach) us something.
There are plenty on here professing what they know and what there experiencs have been – and I am fine with that.
I don’t have all the answers, just the ones about nutrient damage. Nutrient damage from a molecular perspective is not an opinion based issue. When you look in a microscope and see a dead cell for instance, there is no opinion about wether it is dead or not – we don’t need someone else to come in the lab and check it out – a lot of chemistry is trial and error with reactions – but once u know that reaction it is the same always – true red and true blue will always make purple. 2 atoms of Hydrogen met with one atom of oxygen will always make water – and so on and so forth.
I am not smarter than anyone. we all know what we know and we share. I am not attacking some one who disagrees with me. I never wrote back “u idiot…….” No, I didn’t nut my stance on the chemical facts (and they are facts) can’t change. What am i supposed to do? It’s as if someone is telling you that your name isn’t your name.
I didn’t feel i was speaking bad of the lady referenced. I was just sharing myu experiences with some of the other leading nutritionists in america. I will be working hand in hand with many of them in the up coming months. I have been in contact with folks at Columbia U in NY and we are working on a nutrient damage initiative. If you go to Change.org and type in nutrient damage, you will see a petition i have started to coincide with my other efforts to bridge the gap to what chemists know and what the other fields know in that we can have proper labeling of the foods we buy and eat.
This fall, I will be meeting with the folks at UNICEF to carry these issues across the globe, to places like Niger Africa where there is so few nutrients and the ones they do have are damaged.
It is never, never, my intention to insult, put down, or belittle anyone. My work here in the NY has always been about showing folks a new way of thinking about food and ways to feed families better by making smarter choices with their few food budget dollars. I am sory if I have offended anyone Oliver Leslie
Dry yeast can be different from heated yeast. You can’t take the yeast that was used to make bread – back out of the loaf and use it again. If you took a pack of seeds and baked half of them and then planted all of them, only the raw ones will germinate.
There are some seeds that can lay dormant for centuries, and then have water added to them and they will germinate, but if you by one way or another deactivate any of the natural biological functions, then you’ve killed it.
PS Blair
The nutrient damage petition is in it’s infant stages. We have not begun to effort getting signatures – the few on there now are probably folks who surf that site. This was the first time i mentioned it publically. We have not sent out emails or facebook tags or tweets or anything as yet.
It is secondary to what we will actually be doing in the fall with UNICEF, which is to gather some independent chemists in order that we can put together a comprehensive study that layfolk can read and understand. The American Chemists society (ACS) has done many tests that speak to nutrient damage but no one has heard about them and no lay person can make sense of them. And apparantly the FDA doesn’t feel the need to tell people that proteins in cereals are damaged – even though they have the tests results.
It’s the same way the FDA allows Trader Joes to list their almonds as raw when since 2007, they can not be. It is illegal to sell raw almonds in the US – but they still label it as raw. I also wouldn’t trust them on their organic labeling.
Oliver: I did not nor will I read the rest of your posts. Why? Because I do not wish to argue with you. If you do not respect Mary’s credentials, knowledge or reseach and have not read her work, there is not much for us to discuss. The Nourishing Traditions book is why most of us are here. Bashing what Sarah is teaching and what other post is not the way to win converts to your way of thinking. It is a real turn off.
Blair – I am not “bashing” the way anyone is thinking – actually I am doing nothing different from what anyone else is doing here – sharing what they know. Where is the bashing – to say i disagree and how and why I disagree? – Then we are all bashing. Then the back and forth about which corn is GMO or not is bashing, or what is organic or not is bashing or any number of things put forth in this thread.
I did not bash the PHd lady. All I said was the field of nutritional science is at a loss when it come to knowing the science of nutrients – which is strange to me. It is not bashing nor being mean if I am not impressed because someone has a degree as a nutritionist. You can get a nutritionists degree on line – for $500 bucks, in one year. Can a heart surgeon do that?
Ten years of med school is impressive and even they get stuff wrong – check all of the malpractice suits that exist in this country.
We have so many PHD economists in the grand nation – how is that working out?
The reason so many people suffer from some type of vitamin defeciency is because they damage their vitamins. You tell me why so many people are deficient in vitamin c or a or b and d, if there is no nutrient damage existing anywhere – why do you offer up a donut as “okay, that is not nutritioius” – Why not, it has eggs in the batter or flour from wheat soy or corn, and a host of other original whole food sources. It’s not nutritios becaue the nutrient molecules are damaged and that is something no nutritionist can tell you.
For a nutritionist not to know that there is no difference between brown rice or white is negligent – same with whole wheat or white bread – a chemist knows that neither white bread or organic seven grain whole wheat bread has nothing bioactive in except for some toxic trace peptide elements. Does your nutritionist know that? The mill houses, those who mill the flour from wheat or soy or corn tell us that significant damage is done to the nutrients because of the heat in the milling processes and thus most flour has to be enriched or fortified – yet the temps with which we use the flour, for baking frying ect. far excede the milling temps.
All of you, take a slice of bread, any type, and let it sit on a shelf – it will never biodegrade – NEVER! Bread is so dead that you can let a slice sit on a shelf for as long as you want and it will never breakdown or biodegrade or experience any of the natural processes of decay that all other real organisms experience. It will harden once the moisture evaporates but that’s it. There will be no discoloration, no change in size and shape, no odor, nothing. There will be zero biotic activity. Even mold is hard to come by with many of the breads these days. Bread may mold, but that is a topical dynamic, one that can occur with inorganic things like your household sponge or washcloth when left in a warm moist environment. You can find mold on the surface of bricks and bathroom tile even. Mold and bacteria has DNA, bread does not. But just like that sponge, your slice of bread will never bio degrade. It will never breakdown from the inside like all dead things do as well as topically, on their surfaces etc.
Bread has the decay rate of a plastic bottle — 400 years. There is nothing in bread to “give back” to the universe, like an apple or a dead mouse — which will be decomposed long before your slice of bread even hints of going anywhere.
You can try this uber low tech test on your own; take any slice of bread and put it on a shelf with a few true organic items – a peach, a potato, some broccoli, a slab of raw beef or chicken. Watch how all of those things breakdown and go bye bye after some time – the last item remaining will be the bread showing zero signs of change. You can even watch which foods the flies will attract to (not the bread).
We should only be eating things that perish, that decompose, that bio degrade.
Who is telling you about that? No one. Your nutritionist will tell you to boil the beans to get rid of the toxic elements – do they not know that most toxic elements are hardier than the good elements and if you deactivate the bad ones so too go the good ones, rendering your lentil or soy bean an empty mass of starch – this is also the case with rice or pasta etc. But of course pasta is made from flour so that is void of nutrients as well – except for the toxic remnants which bring about issues like celiac etc.
People want to debate about whether corn is organic or not – it doesn’t matter once you boil it in terms of nutrients. Some will even tell you corn was not meant to be eaten by man – the body can’t process or digest it – check your toilet for corn scraps — I’m just sayin
How is it that nutritionists get to lead the health dialogue yet know little if anything about amino acid synthesis and the derivitive nature of ? How is it they can’t tell you what “C63H88CoN14O14P” is or the many things that can damage it, yet they can recommend it?
How is it nutritionists can tell you white meat is better than red yet they don’t realise that once you cook either, it doesn’t really matter. How is it nutritionists don’t realise that once any beast, human, pig, cow, bird, has died it immediatly starts to break down all of the good proteins ( by specially designed enzymes), and that in the decay stages, the good nutrients are one of the first things to go – so if you want real protein from an animal you had better eat it fast and fresh like the lion does.
I am sorry if I don’t always follow conventional lines of thinking and that it can at times take the thread down a different path – I don’t hate any of the hard working folk who are nutritionists – my girlfriend is one. If what I am saying turns you off then you don’t have to read it – but u can be sure on a site that hundreds read, some people will be like “hmmm, let me look into that on my own and see if there is any merit to it – let me see if all almonds are indeed not allowed to be sold raw in america – or anything.
people post some incredulous stuff on these forums – I check them out on my own to see the merit of what they say while some just outright demnounce them – but it is a forum for all peoples, and just like not every one will not agree with me, some will heed somethings i have to say and go and seek further their version of the truth. That is supposedly the beauty and benefit of these types of forums.