Today I want to share one of my favorite breakfast recipes with you: Vanilla Chia Pudding. This easy breakfast pudding requires almost no work at all, contains only a few ingredients and tastes delicious!
Chia seeds are often called “the superior super food”, “every dieter’s dream” or “the ultimate workout fuel” because of their extremely beneficial health properties. Christopher McDougall, author of the bestselling book “Born to Run” promotes chia seeds as a top food for athletes, saying that “in terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach and human growth hormone”. He adds that “if you had to pick just one desert-island food, you couldn't do much better than chia, at least if you were interested in building muscle, lowering cholesterol, and reducing your risk of heart disease; after a few months on the chia diet, you could probably swim home".
This made me wonder… What’s actually in 100g of chia?
The Nutritional Science Research Institute provides the following nutritional information - 100 g of chia contains:
- Protein: 20.7g
- Fat: 32.8g
- Carbohydrate: 41.8g (of which fibre is 41.2g)
- Calcium: 714 mg
- Potassium: 700 mg
- Magnesium: 390 mg
- Phosphor: 1067 mg
- Iron: 16.4 mg
- Zinc: 3.7 mg
- Vitamin B1: 0.18 mg
- Vitamin B2: 0.04 mg
- Vitamin B3: 613mg
… And much more! For the exact scientific information, you can go to http://www.nsrinews.com/abstracts/Chia_Technical_Sheet.pdf
Vanilla Chia pudding
SERVES: 2 people
EQUIPMENT: mixing bowl
INGREDIENTS:
6 tablespoons of chia seeds
2 cups of fresh almond milk (or any other non-dairy milk of your choice)
3 tablespoons of date paste (or any other liquid sweetener of your choice)
2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
2 generous pinches of cinnamon (optional)
1 generous pinch of Himalayan crystal salt or sea salt
DIRECTIONS:
- Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, stir well and let them rest for a few minutes.
- After three to four minutes, stir the mixture with a fork until everything is well combined. Place in the refrigerator.
- After about 1 hour the chia seeds will have soaked up all the liquid, turning the mixture into a creamy pudding.
JULIE’S TIPS AND TRICKS:
You can serve this Vanilla Chia Pudding with fresh or dried fruits, homemade granola, chopped nuts… I usually have my chia pudding with banana and crunchy cinnamon granola!
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