nosh nook #114 - thursday, august 20, 2009

popcorn a hidden source of antioxidants, study says (link)
08.19.09 - abc news - by joseph brownstein

apparently smartfood has been on to something for quite some time now. for almost twenty-five years now (twenty of them as a frito lay company), they've been churning out a white-cheddar popcorn that's both tasty & relatively healthy (free of trans fats, gluten, msg). as such, folks often tend to think of it as a "healthy snack alternative." popcorn's obviously better for you than a bag of cool ranch doritos or barbecue pork rinds, but it turns out that it's even healthier than we thought.

as abc news reports, this tuesday, researchers released a study that found that popcorn has "more of the dietary fiber and antioxidants than any other snack food." take that fictional pomegranate-blueberry-acai barley buckwheat blasted snack bars! joe vinson, a university of scranton chemistry professor who was the study's lead author, breaks it down. "in the case of popcorn, the antioxidants are protected from the sun in the drying process, and the corn loses only a little bit of them when it is popped. additionally, through the whole process, the fiber provided by the whole grain is not removed."

dr. david katz, from yale university's school of medicine, brings up a good point though. "the real issue with popcorn is what gets added to it, and frankly that's often an issue with foods in the modern food supply. if you add a lot of butter and salt to popcorn, it merely becomes the delivery vehicle for a lot of bad stuff." he also notes that "one of the nice things about popcorn is that it's a 'fun food,'" which essentially means that it's both "enjoyable" & "provide(s) nutrition." too bad that popcorn sans salt or butter or caramel is also sans fun. unless someone comes up with a plain popcorn that actually tastes good, i'm going to keep pouring on the butter because as the study shows, even popcorn coated in a pound of butter is popcorn high in antioxidants & fiber...& i can poop better knowing that.