People sell pollen grains as a wonderful source of nutrients, especially amino acids. I known that not all insects can digest pollen. But what about us, humans, can we? Are there any work answering this question?
That is interesting, specially because pollen grains are sold by the price of gold in Brazil. Thank you very much for your answer, Bastl.
Since we have varieties of seeds available to eat for protein, maybe people don't care about eating pollen for protein. Instead, for the bees, for example, pollen is the only source of protein as they don't eat seeds. So, our digestive system also might have evolved in that way. But, Franchi et al. 1997 may have more information though.
There is a review paper of Rouston about pollen digestion in animals (attached) in which the number of empty pollen grains in the gut are used as an indication if digestion.
Pollen collected by honeybees of course has also honey admixed to the pollen.
In addition to nutritional values, Pollen grains have a number of medicinal uses e.g. Stimulate ovarian function, allergies, physical activities, weight control, beauty, etc.
Please take a look at the following RG links.
Article Pollen: Nutrition, Functional Properties, Health
Article Biological and therapeutic properties of bee pollen. A review
Unfortunatelly (Franchi G. G., Franchi G., Corti P., Pompella A. 1997. Microspectrophotometric evaluation of digestibility of pollen grains. Plant Food Hum. Nutr. 50:115-126.) is not a human experiment, it is with a model system. All models have limitations.
- Badges
- Science method
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Ecology