Gluten is the protein found in wheat. It gives wheat the elastic quality that helps it rise and keep its shape while making bread. It does so by creating a gluten network in the dough to trap carbon dioxide during fermentation. This causes the dough to rise and results in a chewy texture.
Over time, wheat varieties that have more gluten have been selected for cultivation. Foods rich in gluten are fairly acid-forming since it is not easy for our bodies to digest gluten. An acidic environment is created in the body which leads to a host of problems – fatigue, acidity, obesity, cancer, diarrhea to name a few.
Today, we eat a diet in which gluten forms a major component whereas our ancestors who ate wheat did so along with many other grains that did not contain gluten. Our bodies can process a little bit of gluten (not in the case of people with celiac disease who cannot eat any gluten) but not if wheat and wheat products become the staple in our diet. Most, if not all, processed food contain gluten – biscuits, noodles, pizza, bread, pasta, breakfast cereals. These foods are the mainstay of our diet today.
Millets are grains that do not have any gluten. Those who have experimented with rolling out ragi, jowar or bajra rotis will vouch for how much easier it is to roll out wheat rotis. However, this makes millets easy to digest and mildly acidic, if not alkaline. If your diet is rich in gluten, consider adding millets to your diet to help create a more alkaline medium in your body. This will go a long way towards improving your health.
Great information.cheers
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thank you !
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Nice information. I read some where that eating millet can cause problems such as harm thyroid glands. is it true
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Thank you for the encouraging words. The connection between Millets and thyroid is not well studied.
Please see an article a public health research friend and I wrote on this subject …. http://wp.me/pihQk-gC
Feel free to contact us if you have any Qs after reading the linked article.
For convenience I am C-Ping the conclusion of article here:
There are several foods that contain goitrogens and a couple of millets have been identified to do so too. The level of these compounds present in various millets is still unclear and more studies are needed to identify that.
Millets are old food, very old in fact. And the notion and evidence of millets containing “anti-nutrients” is also not very new (FAO, n.d.). Millets, it appears, was and is primarily considered an important measure of food security for the poor from arid areas where nothing else grows. It is only recently that the health benefits of millets and their use disease management has increased their appeal to the whole population. There surely is some basis for calling them “healthy food”. There are warnings that there might be some not so desirable components too. But there are many communities around the world that have lived and survived primarily due to their millet centric diets.
It is preferred to have a reasonable diversity in diet, and in sufficient quantities to nourish ourselves. It appears that millets in a balanced vegetarian or non-vegetarian diet should not cause problems, especially one in which there is adequate iodine intake. Practicing the precautionary principle, in particular for pregnant mothers and children who are in greater need for normal thyroid metabolism to ensure appropriate brain and physical development, one should ensure adequate intake of iodine by consciously including Iodine rich foods or supplemented food items like iodized salt.
There are also ways in which millets can be cooked to reduce even the minor risk that may be associated with them, without losing any of its other health benefits. A diet that includes millets is especially beneficial from the glucose metabolism perspective. The many different millet options also offer an unparalleled opportunity for diversifying the cereal component of our diets.
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info is great. Tks
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is millet is totally gluten free and can we prepare chapathi ?
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Yes millets are totally gluten free, but you can not make chapathi from 100% millet flour – you need to mix it with Wheat and use it.
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We can make chapathi with millet flour but rolling is little difficult than normal chapathi.
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Dear Madhura,
Yes, rolling the millet flour into a chapathi when mixed by itself does pose certain challenges. A few people mix the millet rice flour with wheat at around 50:50 proportion. Some add flax seeds to the millet rice grains before getting it ground (100 gms of flax for 2 kgs of the millet rice grains). Some add the flour to boiling water and let it sit for a minute before kneading it and rolling it out. There are multiple options, do try what works for you and please share your experience. thank you !
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