Ch - ch- ch - CHIA!

So last night I ate a tablespoon of a horse supplement...on purpose.

But, let me start from the beginning:

I was reading this really interesting book entitled Born to Run: A hidden tribe, super athletes, and the greatest race the world has never seen by Christopher McDougall (a highly recommended read) which is about humans as natural endurance runners (ha, not in my personal experience) and a indigenous tribe in Mexico called the Tarahumara or Raramuri. They run, like, literally 60-100 miles A DAY like it's nothing (I run, like, 1 mile and feel both suicidal and homicidal). In an aside, the author mentions they eat a concoction they call "Iskiate"- a mixture of Chia seeds and lime juice they use as a regenerative tonic before/during/after ultramarathon-length runs.

Well I gotta have me some super-food, let me tell you. Especially if it will make running easier.

Chia seeds also happened to be the topic of the most recent newsletter I received on Paleo Diets. The Paleo Diet is supposedly what our paleolithic ancestors ate and, thus, is what we are biologically evolved to eat. Needless to say, it does not involve french fries or ice cream (which I feel fully evolved into eating on a fairly regular basis). I don't eat Paleo, as they say, but I do follow The Zone diet (daily intake of 30% protein, 40% complex carbs, 30% healthy fats). I'm not sure where Chia seeds fall in this, but I suspect they are both a carb and a fat.

They are little omega-3 and omega-6 factories (2 tablespoons have more than your daily requirements of each) with pretty high protein content (4 grams per two tablespoons) for plants, anyway. And they are really high in fiber (7 grams per two tablespoons = 33% recommended daily fiber intake).

Screw the health factor: will they make recovery from hard workouts easier AND make me run, say, more than ten minutes without feeling very sorry for myself?



When my 3lb bag of Chia seeds arrived in the mail I was super-pumped. Matt was chanting "this is what people who don't have kids do...they spend their extra time and energy on crazy fads." Like he wasn't right there with me shaking the bag and reading the pages of recipes that came with them. You can sprinkle them in cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, etc, or you can add 1 part Chia to 9 parts water and they turn into a gel (add the gel to soups, liquids, etc and it won't dilute the flavor).



I don't know how you would react, but this bag of 1 millimeter pellets turned us into 5th grade science students. First we read all the information on the bag, then we smelled them and sifted them around a bit. Then we made gel - that was pretty exciting (or maybe it's only exciting for people with no lives and few hobbies). Finally, we devolved into TRUE children in science class:



Matt: eat it.
Me: No! Eww!
Matt: Why did you buy them? Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!
Me: YOU eat it
Matt: No! I'm not the one who bought them
Me: (sniffing the bag) Okay, how?
Matt: eat the gel!
Me: No, I'll take a taste
Matt: PUSSY! EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT!

Well, nobody calls ME a pussy at 9 o'clock at night in my own kitchen. On the other hand, the gel looks really disgusting. So I took a spoonful of the seeds from the bag and dropped it on my tongue.

Chia seeds have almost no flavor at all, but they do turn kind of slimy as they react to your saliva (becoming gel, I guess). I drank a bunch of water to wash those little buggers down and it occurred to me that, if you add 1 part Chia to 9 parts water and they expand, won't they do that in your stomach? Hmmm. Am I going to be uncomfortably full from a teaspoon of Chia? Or is my stomach going to blow up like a starving kid in Africa?

Bloating was not my goal.

The other thing about those bastards is they get stuck in your teeth. Everywhere. They are slightly larger than a poppy seed and after a spoonful I looked like I had eaten poppy-seed/jellyfish hybrids. And somehow they hide in, like, every crevice in your mouth. Every time I moved my tongue I found seeds. I looked like I lost all my teeth and was chewing dentures.

Well, the excitement of eating a teaspoon of seeds passed and I started looking through the recipes again and ran across a colorful little card with a checklist of the wonderful properties of Chia...

Me: Wait...what does that say?
Matt: (laughing uncontrollably)
Me: Does that say "Equine Chia?"
Matt: (laughing)
Me: DOES THAT SAY "HORSE SUPPLEMENT?"



My mane better be REAL shiny after this.