Milk thistle seeds: anyone nuts.com enough to love?

[Sthira]

I've never had a handful. You? Any good?

 

https://nuts.com/cookingbaking/seeds/milk-thistle.html

 

"Milk Thistle Seeds truly are one of a kind. While most people are aware that Milk Thistle has strong medicinal benefits for the liver, few realize what a versatile food the seeds make. Many find the taste comparable to a cross between hemp and flax seeds. These are some of the few Milk Thistle seeds that you will find certified organic.

 

They can be mixed into salads, nut milks, shakes, and more. They can also be used as a substitute or mixed in with flax, sesame, hemp or others for added flavor and nutrition.

 

Some of the health benefits are:

 

A compound in Milk Thistle seed has been shown to protect the liver from a variety of harmful substances. It can prevent toxins from penetrating the interior of liver cells, while promoting the growth of healthy new cells to repair liver damage. Other compounds in the seed may have a similarly renewing effect on the kidneys, and may even be beneficial for the prostate gland. The seeds also have antioxidant properties, helping mop up damaging free radicals.

 

Milk Thistle seeds are also an excellent vegetarian source of protein, containing 18-25% protein by weight. Plus, they offer an excellent and well-rounded amino acid profile that perfectly compliments the more common nuts and seeds like almonds, flax, etc.

[Dean Pomerleau]

Sthira,

 

Thanks for pointing out that Nuts.com carries organic milk thistle seeds. I'm tempted, since I do take milk thistle, in capsule form, every couple days for prophylactic liver support as part of my supplement regime. If they really are similar to help and flax seeds in flavor, I'm sure I'd really enjoy them.

 

But they are a bit too much of a "functional food" for me to feel safe simply slipping them into my diet along with the other nuts and seeds I eat. In fact, they aren't even in the nutrition databases, and hence, not in CRON-O-Meter. It's not clear to me how much of the active ingredient in milk thistle (Silymarin) there is in a gram of seeds. So I'd be worried about overdoing it on them if I added them in an appreciable quantity to my seed mixture. Plus their country of origin is China, which I'm always a little leery about, despite the USDA organic labelling.

 

So while I really do shoot for dietary diversity (e.g. there are 6 different seeds in the seed mix I eat - flax, chia, hemp, sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin - all from Nuts.com), I think I'm pass on adding milk thistle seeds to the mix.

 

--Dean