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Nutritiously Indian
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Lentil is a popular meal with rich nutritional elements
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LENTIL IS a nutritious legume that provides most of the protein in a typical Indian meal. Lentils are native to the western rim of Asia and they are among the oldest of cultivated food crops. The legume soon spread east and west, becoming a staple in India, Afghanistan, China, Eastern Europe, Abyssinia and the Nile delta. Eastern monks in the 6th century A.D. approved of this crop because they believed it dampened lust.
Lentil is mostly consumed as dhal, and it is the prince among all the dhals because it has more protein and carbohydrate. All over India, there are literally more than a thousand ways of preparing dhal, the "poor man's meat". Mashed dhal is one of the principal weaning foods in India, and the legume just stays with you from cradle to grave. Fried lentils, with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, are a popular snack all over the Indian subcontinent. Lentil flour is a common ingredient in many processed foods for infants and it also a familiar ingredient in soups, baked foods and purees.
Hundred gms of dried lentils contain around 345 calories. They are rich in B vitamins and nutritional factors like thiamine, riboflavin, choline, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, folic acid, nicotinic acid, biotin and the essential fatty acid, linoleic acid. Sprouted lentils contain more vitamins than dried lentil seeds.
Lentils are rich in the nutritionally important arginine, leucine, lysine and sulphur containing amino acids, but the protein — nearly 20 per cent by weight, is not complete like meat, soybean or egg protein because it lacks methionine, an essential amino acid. However, cereals are rich in methionine and a meal of lentils and cereals is a very good source of complete protein. Nearly 65 per cent of a lentil seed is carbohydrate, and it is also rich in dietary fibre, phosphorous and potassium.
Lentils contain trypsin inhibitors, oligosaccharides and haemagglutinins that can cause flatulence. It takes cooking or germination to neutralise these anti-nutritional factors; mere soaking will not do. The medicinal uses of lentils are few and far between. When small pox was ravaging India, lentil paste was a poultice for the disfiguring lesions of the disease. It has been two decades since small pox was wiped off the face of the earth, so this is one remedy you will never have to employ!
RAJIV. M
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