Seeds from ancient food crops with the potential for antiobesity promotion

Abstract

Populations like to have a healthy diet without changing their fundamental dietary pattern. The importance of dietetic foods with health potential has increased the interest of consumers on crops with nutraceutical messages. Several plant food products from selected ancient crops like flax, chia, black cumin, sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds contain substances with high health benefits. These crops are usually rich sources in fatty acids, sterols, phenolic compounds and dietary fiber which have mainly shown the ability to increase satiety and obesity control, among chronic degenerative diseases and others. These plant seeds offer outstanding features for the food and nutraceutical industries, due to their functional components. This review focuses on scientific evidence of the different potential benefits of these crops on human antiobesity promotion.

Keywords:

• Bioactive compounds
• nutraceuticals
• obesity
• overweight
• seeds
• weight loss

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Research studies on chia by our group have been mostly financed by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (México), and recently by la Valse Food-CYTED, Valencia, Spain.