How does millet benefit the environment and can millets be eaten at night and how often can I use millets in our food?
Being a C4 group of cereals, millets convert more carbon dioxide to oxygen, contributing in mitigating climate change. Millets can endure extremely high temperatures to drought to salinity making it a climate resilient crop. Tryptophan in millet raises the serotonin level in the body which helps in reducing stress. A cup of millet porridge every night can help to get sound and peaceful sleep. Millets can be consumed on a daily basis. They can either be used as it is or can be mixed with wheat and rice based products. In order to get the millets back in to our home, we need to start in stages by using in small percentage in the beginning. Gradually the proportion of millets can be increased. A simple way to begin may be by using millet’s rice along with the Paddy rice (White Rice). One can start with 10% of millets rice mixing and gradually increasing the proportion to 50%. In this way the taste would be retained together with the nutrient benefits of millets. Kids can also be given millets in the form of Ragi biscuits & Bajra chips. Chapattis can be baked using multigrain flour. Pure millets rice, millet idlis, pongal, pulao, khichdiCurd rice, Dosa, Idly, Puttu etc. can all be made with millets.
Tryptophan in millet raises the serotonin level in the body which helps in reducing stress. A cup of millet porridge every night can help to get sound and peaceful sleep.3-4 times a week is safe to consume millets. Millets like Ragi and Jowar can be consumed daily once in a meal or snacks. On average, an adult should include 30 – 40 grams of grains per day. Millets, like any other healthy meal, must be consumed in moderation. These are safe to eat 3-4 times a week. Millets like Ragi and Jowar can be eaten once a day as a meal or as a snack. The easiest way to eat millet is by toasting 2 cups of grains in a couple of tablespoons of oil in a heavy bottomed pan. Once the grains turn golden brown, lower the heat and add in 3 cups of stock and some fresh parsely or coriander and let it simmer for 20 minutes till the liquid is soaked up. A breakfast with fiber, protein and healthful fats helps prevent you from overeating during the day. With 207 calories, 6 grams of protein, 1 gram of fat and 2 grams of fiber per cooked cup, millet is an ideal breakfast choice. One of the easiest ways to incorporate millets into your diet is by cooking chapatis with 50 percent whole wheat flour and using a millet-based flour like ragi flour or jowar flour for the remaining part of the dough. As millets have more tillers or branches than corn and sorghum, they provide better fodder too. Millet crops also have a good ability to sequester carbon and so help climate adaptation, considering the water needs and methane emission of rice fields. Millets require less fertilizer and pesticide, unlike mainstream cereals, for cultivation. Millets supply superior nutrients and possess excellent climate resilience properties. Therefore, promotion of millets could help attain the sustainable developmental goals (SDGs). Millets are rich source of nutrients, antioxidants and proteins. Besides that, they have the ability to sequester carbon thereby reducing the release of atmospheric CO2 thus contribute in mitigating climate change.
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