{"id":1756,"date":"2012-07-12T11:10:11","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T15:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/?p=1756"},"modified":"2012-07-09T11:16:07","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T15:16:07","slug":"good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html","title":{"rendered":"Good-for-You Food of the Week — Quinoa"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>A new wonder grain that is rich in protein and low on the glycemic index?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Well, almost. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) isn\u2019t really new, since it was cultivated by the ancient Incas in the Andes Mountains of South America.\u00a0 They called it the \u201cMother Grain.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it actually isn\u2019t a grain.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a grass product, but the seed of a leafy flowering plant.<\/p>\n

But the nutritional content is<\/em> pretty wonderful and it rates a 53 (green for go) on the glycemic index.\u00a0 That means it won\u2019t cause a rapid rise in your blood sugar level.<\/p>\n

Even better, quinoa is a good source of both fiber and protein. The fiber\u00a0 slows digestion, keeping blood sugar levels stable, and it also helps keep the toxins moving from your system.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s the protein, though, that makes this food a stand-out. Quinoa has more protein than any other grain. It has 16.2 percent, compared with 7.5 percent for rice and 14 percent for wheat.\u00a0 This protein is of unusually high quality with an amino acid balance close to ideal.\u00a0 That\u2019s why vegetarians love it.<\/p>\n

This seed is rich in B vitamins, iron, calcium and magnesium.\u00a0 That translates into higher energy levels, and the ingredients for good blood, bones, and teeth. Magnesium helps keep blood sugar stable, helps your body assimilate and use calcium, and helps maintain a good heart rhythm.\u00a0 It also helps prevent PMS and migraines. That\u2019s a lot for some tiny seeds to deliver!<\/p>\n

Eating gluten-free?\u00a0 No problem!\u00a0 You can replace those gluten-full grains with quinoa.<\/p>\n

Quinoa is rich in lysine, which in turn is important for the production of carnitine.\u00a0 That nutrient is responsible for turning fatty acids into energy and for lowering cholesterol.<\/p>\n

Methionine is another protein-based amino acid\u00a0found in abundance in quinoa. It assists with metabolic function, breaks down fat, and is the primary source of sulfur in the body.\u00a0 It is known as a lipotrophic (a fat burner or antioxidant). Methionine is also critical for the removal of heavy metals, such as lead and mercury, from the body — something good to know in our toxic-laden world! \u00a0 If that isn\u2019t enough to tell you this stuff does good things for you, methionine is also good for your skin and nails.<\/p>\n

The third amino acid found in quinoa is cystine, which is sometimes marketed as an anti-aging product. It, too, helps make good connective tissue, skin and nails.\u00a0 It promotes the production of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant, and works together with glutathione to remove toxins from the liver. Cystine also can help with rheumatoid arthritis pain.<\/p>\n

Sounds pretty wonderful, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 So how do we use it?\u00a0 Just about like any grain.\u00a0 You can cook it like rice in your rice cooker, and quinoa flour can be used in baking.<\/p>\n

You can eat it as a breakfast cereal, or you can fix it as a side dish for dinner.\u00a0 With a few additions, you can make it a main course.\u00a0 You see, there are foods out there that are good and good for you!\u00a0 The trick is to pick the ones that help you instead of hurting you.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow we will post a quinoa recipe with a Mexican zing.<\/p>\n

Eating to live and living for Christ,<\/p>\n

Susan Jordan Brown<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new wonder grain that is rich in protein and low on the glycemic index? Well, almost. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) isn\u2019t really new, since it was cultivated by the ancient Incas in the Andes Mountains of South America.\u00a0 They called it the \u201cMother Grain.\u201d And it actually isn\u2019t a grain.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a grass product,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[526,527,240,525],"class_list":["post-1756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eating-plan","tag-amino-acids","tag-glutathione","tag-magnesium","tag-quinoa"],"yoast_head":"\nGood-for-You Food of the Week - Quinoa - Beyond Gorgeous<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Good-for-You Food of the Week - Quinoa - Beyond Gorgeous\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A new wonder grain that is rich in protein and low on the glycemic index? Well, almost. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) isn\u2019t really new, since it was cultivated by the ancient Incas in the Andes Mountains of South America.\u00a0 They called it the \u201cMother Grain.\u201d And it actually isn\u2019t a grain.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a grass product,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Gorgeous\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-07-12T15:10:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-07-09T15:16:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/files\/2012\/07\/headshot9-150x150.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"sbrown\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Good-for-You Food of the Week - Quinoa - Beyond Gorgeous","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Good-for-You Food of the Week - Quinoa - Beyond Gorgeous","og_description":"A new wonder grain that is rich in protein and low on the glycemic index? Well, almost. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) isn\u2019t really new, since it was cultivated by the ancient Incas in the Andes Mountains of South America.\u00a0 They called it the \u201cMother Grain.\u201d And it actually isn\u2019t a grain.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a grass product,…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Gorgeous","article_published_time":"2012-07-12T15:10:11+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-07-09T15:16:07+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/files\/2012\/07\/headshot9-150x150.jpg"}],"author":"sbrown","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html","name":"Good-for-You Food of the Week - Quinoa - Beyond Gorgeous","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/files\/2012\/07\/headshot9-150x150.jpg","datePublished":"2012-07-12T15:10:11+00:00","dateModified":"2012-07-09T15:16:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/#\/schema\/person\/710ec516b61bcd3c78925c0c31c5afe6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/files\/2012\/07\/headshot9-150x150.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/files\/2012\/07\/headshot9-150x150.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/07\/good-for-you-food-of-the-week-quinoa.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Good-for-You Food of the Week — Quinoa"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/","name":"Beyond Gorgeous","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Susan Jordan Brown","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/#\/schema\/person\/710ec516b61bcd3c78925c0c31c5afe6","name":"sbrown","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/author\/sbrown"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1760,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions\/1760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}