Reference Number: 468
Year: 2018
Link: Link to original paper
Health: Cardiometabolic diseases | Depression | Gut Microbiome - Creating Healthier Bread to Support Optimal Gut Health | Inflammation | Lower Inflammation
Nutrition: Antioxidants | Polyphenols | Prebiotic
Summary
Barley grass powder is the best functional food that provides nutrition and eliminates toxins from cells in human beings; however, its functional ingredients have played an important role as health benefit. In order to better cognize the preventive and therapeutic role of barley grass for chronic diseases, we carried out the systematic strategies for functional ingredients of barley grass, based on the comprehensive databases, especially the PubMed, Baidu, ISI Web of Science, and CNKI, between 2008 and 2017. Barley grass is rich in functional ingredients, such as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), flavonoids, saponarin, lutonarin, superoxide dismutase (SOD), K, Ca, Se, tryptophan, chlorophyll, vitamins (A, B1, C, and E), dietary fiber, polysaccharide, alkaloid, metallothioneins, and polyphenols. Barley grass promotes sleep; has antidiabetic effect; regulates blood pressure; enhances immunity; protects liver; has anti-acne/detoxifying and antidepressant effects; improves gastrointestinal function; has anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, hypolipidemic, and antigout effects; reduces hyperuricemia; prevents hypoxia, cardiovascular diseases, fatigue, and constipation; alleviates atopic dermatitis; is a calcium supplement; improves cognition; and so on. These results support that barley grass may be one of the best functional foods for preventive chronic diseases and the best raw material of modern diet structure in promoting the development of large health industry and further reveal that GABA, flavonoids, SOD, K-Ca, vitamins, and tryptophan mechanism of barley grass have preventive and therapeutic role for chronic diseases. This paper can be used as a scientific evidence for developing functional foods and novel drugs for barley grass for preventive chronic diseases.
Significance of this study to the baker:
Barley Grass (Hordeum Leporinum) has young green leaves and is consumed as a popular green-coloured drink for its association with various health benefits. We use it here at the Sourdough School as part of our Botanical Blends.
This is because as this study shows, Barley Grass is rich in dietary fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals as well as chlorophyll, polyphenols and flavonoids. In addition it also contains GABA (calming brain chemical) and tryptophan (precursor to serotonin). Due to these active ingredients animal studies find barley grass to hold antidepressant properties as well as improving sleep, promoting immunity, regulating blood pressure and protecting the liver.
