The package of chia seeds I have at home states that the “maximum daily intake of chia seeds should not exceed 15g per day”. Is there a reason for that? Would it be harmful to eat more than 15g/day?
I discovered that about 1/3 cup a day is too much, and THEN discovered that unless you’re making chia seed puddings, you should always grind your chia seeds, same as with flax seeds - there are some scientific articles that describe this if you want to unleash your Google-Fu but in essence, your body can’t absorb all the vitamins and minerals that chia and flax seeds contain unless they’re broken down and the outer “hulls” are breached.
There was a brief period when I was going HAM on some chia seed puddings, and BOY did I have a fiesta of digestive experiences. At one point, eating the same volume of chia seeds each day, my digestive system was more efficient than an American muscle car engineered in Germany and built in Japan. I was invincible. At the other end of that spectrum, there was some extremely uncomfortable constipation for about three days. It ended with a very unpleasant bathrooms experience that you don’t need to know about. Suffice it to say, your body stops digesting chia seeds at a certain point.
TL;DR: Grind yo’ chia! Also, don’t eat 1/3 cup of it at a time.
The container of Badia organic chia seeds i have says that a serving size is 2 T (30 g). I’ve been eating a heaping tablespoon daily (so over 15 g) on top of my daily yogurt & berries, for several months. Definitely no diarrhea. Maybe im chia-adapted.
You don’t want your insides to look like a chia pet, do you?
Kidding aside, a serving is 24g, or about 2 tbsp. I use that amount with 6oz of soy milk to make chia pudding, which is a great dessert with fruit. You don’t have to measure something like chia seeds by the gram, just use a common tablespoon measurement.
Drink a lot of water with your chia.
At least where I live they recommend that you should not eat more than 15g/day in total of any seeds. And you should vary which seeds you eat from day to day or at least many times per week. Kids from 1 to 6 years old it’s half of that. Pregnant women shouldn’t eat much seeds at all, only some in breads or wherever they are in small amounts and not added afterwards.
Reason to that is that seeds can have high amounts of heavy metals such as nickel and cadmium.
Chia can be binding to the bowels as it absorbs 10 times its weight in water… therefore it can draw on fluids in your bowl and cause major constipation… it is best to consume it already in a gel form before ingestion. Take a 2 cup jar and add 1/4 cup chia with 2 cups water, stir and let set. Keep it refrigerated and add a couple Tbl to any smoothie or fluid and consume it that way, reconstituted…as it will then not draw on your body. More is not better with chia… powerful ingredient
You should always soak them overnight, too. They shouldn’t inflate inside your body. That’s the problem when traditional foods get exported to the globalized diet without the culture about how to eat them.
When I was trying a plant-based diet for a while, I ate a type of seed porridge I concocted:
- 28g chia seeds, 28g hemp hearts, 28g ground flaxseed, 28g chopped pepitas, 1 cup of unsweetened vanilla almond milk, and sometimes fruit
I ate this literally every day for months and felt fine. After switching to a whole food diet, I never have digestive issues.
Hydrate your chia seeds before consuming them in any form, see what they do to a glass of water, then imagine what they would do on your insides if you didn’t hydrate them and took too much. And for the love, keep it at a minimal.
Yes, they are very high in oxalate. Consuming high amounts of oxalate rich foods made me develop intolerance, now I get mast cell/histamine release effects every time I eat an oxalate rich food. Could also cause kidney stone formation.
There’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. One of the worst things we can do, too, is to go from almost no fiber to dramatically more. Hello constipation. You should watch chubbyemu’s video on YouTube about the guy who consumed too much Metamucil. Although I don’t know if chia seeds can respond quite as aggressively as psyllium husk.
I was told by my herbalist that most supplement companies put the lowest effective dose (or something like that) as the daily max to avoid legal troubles. They use an amount that basically no one has been harmed by as the maximum to avoid liability. For that reason, he recommended that we should often exceed those recommended dosages with most herbal supplements, and to take various forms (tincture, dry herb, etc) for more of a full spectrum benefit.Just what comes to my mind as I read this. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions. Yohimbe, for example is very dose specific and even a threshhold dose can be uncomfortable
I swear there was a TIFU about a guy who ate a ton of chia seeds at once and ended up going to the ER due to a blocked colon or something. I think that warning is about not causing an ileus by eating too much at one time.