Good Morning America's Robin Roberts recently hosted registered dietician, celebrity weight loss and breast cancer prevention specialist Rachel Beller presenting a spot about eating proactively for optimal breast health. In this “Meal Options for Better Breast Health” and “Food to Fuel the Survivor” segment, Beller shared her love for our Zen Basil Seeds. She also shared yet another way to incorporate Zen Basil Seeds into the diet, offering a recipe for a delicious Cashew Yogurt Crunch as a healthy breakfast option. Roberts and her team of GMA food test-tasters gave a thumbs up for “yum.”
Zen Basil Seeds is Celebrity Dietician Rachel Beller's New “Favorite Seed”
Beller, also a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, said that, along with her magic sweetening spice blend, the Cashew Yogurt Crunch contains her “new favorite seed”: edible basil seeds. For those in the nutritional know, certain seeds- most especially basil seeds- bring digestive, disease-prevention, and other health benefits to the mix. Basil seeds, however, are the most powerful and convenient to use natural delivery system of all.
“(Basil seeds) gel similarly to chia seeds,” Beller reported, describing Zen Basil Seeds, “but a lot faster.” In fact, basil seeds are quite valuable as an organic thickener and stabilizer for both commercial and home cooking food preparation. Beller also shared in the segment that basil seeds are “incredible for breast health, and also prebiotic fiber which is really just great.” It's worth noting that this prebiotic plant-based fiber, or pectin, is a soluble fiber that nourishes good gut bacteria. Our Zen Basil Seeds actually have the highest level of fiber- at eight (8) grams per tablespoon- of all nutritive seed products. In fact, Zen Basil Seeds have 2x the fiber found in any chia seeds product. Studies have shown this prebiotic fiber is often lacking in American diets, however it is essential for maintaining optimal gut health which, in effect, helps maintain optimal overall physical- as well as cognitive- functioning. Zen Basil Seeds thus brings nutritive value to the whole body.
Zen Basil Seeds – Tiny Organic Powerhouses Packing a Healthy Punch
If edible basil seeds seem new to the current foods market, at Zen Basil Seeds we're reminding they've been around for thousands of years and known for their great nutritive value and other healing properties. As you know, however, not all edible basil seeds products are alike. In fact, there is no other organic basil seed product other than Zen Basil Seeds. We are proud to offer 100% organic, non-GMO basil seeds that contain those 8 grams of fiber per tablespoon, two times the amount of fiber, potassium, calcium, and iron over chia seeds, and a product rich in prebiotics, polyphenols, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and Omega 3 & 6.
Zen Basil Seeds are raw organic basic seeds derived from the sweet basil plant or Ocimum Basilicum. Basil seeds predating Zen Basil Seeds have been used in Auyervedic and Eastern Medicine for thousands of years, and they are little powerhouses of good health. This is one of the many things that prompted our company founder, Shakira Niazi and team to begin our adventure in bringing this goodness to market. While edible basil seeds may look “just like” sesame seeds (but black in color), they contain a surprising cache of protective and other health benefits.
One tablespoon of Zen Basil Seeds delivers 15% of the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) of calcium, 15% RDI of iron, and 10% RDI of magnesium. These elements are important for healthy bones and good maintenance of hemoglobin levels and red blood cell production- especially important for women and also important for anyone who might be eating a Vegan or vegetarian diet. Zen Basil Seeds, again at just one tablespoon, supplies 27% RDI of plant-based fiber- awesome if anyone is dieting or in need of assuring daily fiber intake due to eating on the go and busy lifestyle. The side benefits of this also include a better feeling of food satiation after eating (feeling “full” faster)- again great if dieting- and also easy maintenance of blood sugar as well as instant support to gut flora. An additional benefit may also include reduction of cholesterol level.
Zen Basil Seeds are also rich in plant compounds such as flavonoids and polyphenols- dynamic antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer elements. These potentiate protection against many threats to overall good health, including heart disease, damage to the eyes, and even cancer. Zen Basil Seeds also contain, in just one tablespoon, proportionately massive amounts of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), or Omega-3 fat, a plant-derived fat compound that is highly important in producing energy in the body. Studies are now also showing that ALA may also aid in reducing inflammation and also in mitigating health risks leading to conditions such as type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease. Adding Zen Basil Seeds to meals instantly facilitates adding anti-inflammatory foods to the diet with convenience. So much goodness in such tiny form!
Zen Basil Seeds – from One Woman to All Women Wanting to Change the World
Keenly aware of the goodness to be found in Zen Basil Seeds, company founder Shakira Niazi took up a banner with great joy- something for which she is well-suited as well as passionate. “My mission,” Niazi says, “is to share my family’s recipe, basil seed, a high-fiber super foods ingredient from the Far East, with my Western families, a much needed product loaded with natural plant-based fiber, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, omega’s and antioxidants. At the same token, I’m committed to integrating this powerful health promoting super food with giving back to those in dire need.”
“I believe the world is connected by humanity, Niazi says further, “and that we must be mindful of our human family. When we share our health promoting ingredients, we are indeed helping to heal one another.” Niazi and her son, Imran Niazi, believe that life starts with water. Zen Basil’s additional “secret ingredient,” as this dynamic duo explain it, is their intention: they believe in being mindful of our human family and committed in eradicating the lack of safe water crisis. With this focus, Niazi formed her own clean water charity, funded in part through revenues from Zen Basil Seeds, to establish clean water wells and solar panels in villages around the world.
Escaping war-torn Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in 1979, and just ten years old when she had to run for her life with her family to escape war, Niazi came to the US after surviving a refugee camp in Pakistan- even having her family broken up along the way. She describes her most vivid memory to be one of walking through icy-cold water, barefoot, pondering the fact that this same water was a source of drinking water for so many people despite its impurity, contamination, and otherwise insidious potential to harm many in the local villages, including children. Niazi would later come to know that lack of access to clean drinking water kills over a million children under the age of five (5) every year...
Establishing herself, via education at Cal State in the East Bay, as a highly successful business woman in Silicon Valley, Niazi took action upon that memory: She established “Salvare La Via,” or “Save a Life” Water, a premium brand bottled water sold strategically to various businesses, including those in the hotel industry, to begin raising capital for funding international well projects.
“I felt the need was to create a system where it was funding itself,” Niazi says, “instead of constantly looking for donations and help.” Once marking a mark for herself in the women-owned small business segment, Niazi completed her first two clean water wells in Afghanistan. Niazi then declared only one major requirement as she sought to establish partnerships with vetted international charities for future locations: to ensure that each well established by her clean water charity is run by a woman.
“When you empower women,” Niazi says, “you're empowering their family and you're empowering the community, and you're empowering, ultimately, the country and the world.” To date, profits from her two franchises, including Zen Basil Seeds, have established 55 clean water well projects and a solar panel in nine (9) different countries, providing over 60,000 people with clean drinking water.
At Zen Basil Seeds, we are proud to be a part of this charitable concern, knowing that, as company founder Niazi shares when she speaks about Salvare La Vita: “When you invest in doing something good, there is so much return that I promise you, you'll feel abundance.”
Proud to Be Included in the GMA Program – Bringing You Good Food for Good Breast Health
“We Fight, We Thrive” is the motto embraced by the Good Morning America Breast Health program, and we're so happy to be a part of that. At Zen Basil Seeds, the leading brand of edible basil seeds in North America, recommended by doctors and dieticians, alike, we offer the only USDA approved organic basil seed in existence that is also lectin-free (Dr. Steven Gundry approved!), gluten-free, perfect for Keto, Paleo. and Vegan diets, and even Certified Kosher by Kosher Earth.
Our product is packed in California and regulated by the California Department of Health Food, and we strive to stay at the forefront of nutritional excellence, prevention and healing. As such, we're over-the-moon with joy to have been chosen for use in Beller's basil seed recipes and to have been included in Good Morning America's wonderful program in support of Breast Health. Here's hoping that you'll give the Cashew Yogurt Crunch recipe a try, starting off your day- or week, or even the upcoming holidays and New Year- with a super delicious and super nutritious meal that is not only tasty and satisfying, but also contains our family's vanguard product of health for the body, mind, and soul while helping to make available clean drinking water to everyone on our planet.