What are the medical benefits of quinoa?

Question by Future Pet Vet:

What are the medical benefits of quinoa?

Hi,

I have been doing some research on the quinoa plant. I can't seem to find enough information on the benefits medically from the quinoa. Can you help me, by telling me the medical benefits of the plant? As well as, which part of the plant helps each medical condition/problem? Links(not wikipedia) to sites about the medical benefits can help me too.

Thank you!




Best answer:

Answer by ❀ a sojourner ❀ ☪ ♡ ❀
Hi

It seems it is as yet not a very well studied plant. I found a couple of articles from university websites that might help:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/AFCM/quinoa.html
http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0646e/T0646E0f.htm
Though there might be some overlap in content.
Other than that, what I can suggest is to use the Pubmed website that is a database of medical and scientific abstracts from published journals:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
I went on Pubmed. There is not a lot to go on really even though there are over 200 hits. From a quick browse, and having a background in biochemistry myself, I think it looks like the main active components that could be of interest therapeutically are the saponins. Not all saponins are theraputic, some are toxic or haemolytic. But having read further it looks more like quinoa saponins are toxic rather than therapetic hence the need for soaking of the grains.

You could go through those abstracts to see if there is anything of specific interest.

Hope that helps.
Good luck with your research.
Thanks..

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