Discussion Board

Sounds good! I like the idea of a paper bag (or glass), as a plastic bowl in the microwave is questionable. Dr Andrew Weil wrote years ago that a microwave is OK (non-ionizing) for warming or briefly cooking food, but not to use it with a plastic pan or container. Many frozen foods are packed in these "microwave safe" containers. Dr Weil says a microwave is energetic enough to transfer some of the plastic molecules into the food...Mike

Yeah, I have seen some microwaveable meals in plastic labeled microwave safe but I don't trust it.

Every household should have an air-popper!

What's the best way top buy healthy popcorn for the "brown bag" microwave method? Probably not little microwave packets. I don't recall seeing it in bulk at our Health Food Coop, but maybe it is available in bulk. And how much would 1 or 2 serving be? thanks...Mike

Definitely available in bulk, just depends on if a particular store carries it. And definitely not those microwaveable bags as they are loaded with oil, salt, and quite possibly strange chemicals. But most grocery stores carry popcorn in jars, etc. like Orville Redenbacher is one brand. Don't know for sure but I think GMO has not hit popcorn yet?

I never have figured out the "serving" thing about any food. I eat much bigger amounts of what I eat than most people. Popcorn you need to be a little careful because corn itself is pretty calorie dense. Popcorn by volume is mostly air so you can eat a lot of it and not get full and end up eating a lot of corn. Back when I was in acupuncture school I used to fill a salad serving bowl to eat while I studied and when it was emptied, refill it... But that was about 25 years ago and I was burning a lot more calories then.

Very knowledgeable friend just told me that popcorn will NOT cross w/ GMO corn because they are quite genetically different. So no danger of even wind drift contamination.

He also mentioned, for those who care, that high heat of popping will destroy quite a few nutrients so just sprouting and eating the sprouts would be much more nutritious. Of course not as fun or tasty...

"Polyphenols" are just one type of antioxidant. Does this study cover vitamins which can also be antioxidant? If not, and they're only comparing that one type of antioxidant here, it's likely that fresh fruits and vegetables have much more antioxidants per serving (just not that specific type).

I'd really be surprised if popcorn actually does have more antioxidant nutrients, total, than fresh foods do. Not that it's terrible if it doesn't, though-- I had some as a snack today! It just seems a little misleading (though I didn't read the whole article, just what was pasted here).

tried it tonight...Delicious, w/just nutritional yeast. Our coop did have organic yellow popcorn in bulk. (the much more expensive Newman's Own "organic" microwave popcorn we carried has butter, oil, and salt) And since we switched to brown paper bags, no plastic, was able to recycle the bag in the cooking. A little corn I found goes a long way, took about 1 min, 45 sec....Knowledge Is Power! thanks for the posts...Mike

Based on that article, they studied just polyphenols. Unfortunately, I could not find the actual study online. I don't think that anyone should start replacing fresh fruits and vegetables with popcorn in large amounts based on this article. What I take from it is that popcorn can be healthy and tasty snack that comes with significant amount of polyphenols (from the Science Daily article):



This was also interesting:



I have been wondering the same thing about hemp seeds. Many prefer the shelled version, but I tend to eat the seeds with hulls. It seems to be obvious that with the hull comes more fiber, but the antioxidant content is still quite unclear.