si dawson

I've recently been intro­duced to the ben­e­fits of LSA. That is:

3 parts Lin­seed
2 parts Sun­flower seeds
1 part Almonds

This was used by San­dra Cabot as a liver cleans­ing diet (although orig­i­nally put together by a cou­ple of other Aus­tralians, in the 80's).

Ok, so that's great. Soak, grind & add that to my diet, and we're away. Right? Wrong.

Turns out, I didn't have any lin­seed hang­ing around the place, just some lin­seed meal — I fig­ure that's gotta be the same stuff, just ground up, so where's the problem?

One thing that juice fast taught me was to lis­ten very, very closely to my body when I'm feed­ing it things, and I noticed that after hav­ing the LSA mix, some­thing wasn't quite right. Basi­cally ok, just a lit­tle off.

So I started doing some research.

Lin­seed is another term for flaxseed. Flaxseed is well known as a source of omega-3's, etc etc. So what's the problem?

Turns out lin­seed meal is a by-product of extract­ing the oil from flax/linseeds. Ie, it's what's left over after you take the oil away.

Now, lin­seed meal is fed to horses, and is still high in pro­tein, so what gives?

Then I dis­cov­ered this [pdf]. "The toxic action of lin­seed meal on trout". Turns out some sci­en­tists dis­cov­ered that when you feed lin­seed meal (ie, the by-product, not the entire seed) to trout, it turns them black. And blind. And dead.

So. Entire seed, good. Meal, bad. Of Course! How Obvi­ous! *facepalm*

It's a tricky world out there. Stay sharp kids!