Eating flax seed (linaza) in Chile

I bake bread.  I started in graduate school when I found the baking process gave me lots of excuses for study breaks, and at the end of the day, hot bread…  a tangible product from my day’s efforts—something that could not be said for a day at the books.


Flax seeds

Forty years later I still bake bread, mostly multigrain sourdough, so when I moved to Chile (sourdough starter squirreled away in my luggage), I started looking around for flours and grains.  In the local Jumbo supermarket I found a reasonable assortment:  whole wheat flour; rye flour; polenta and chuchoca (a fine corn meal); quinoa seeds and flour; sesame, sunflower and poppy seeds, and linaza—both flour and seeds.  I bought the seeds.  They give bread a nice nutty flavor and a little crunch.  

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But what are they?  Although flax seeds and flour must be common in US health food stores, I had never encountered either—they don’t show up in central Illinois supermarkets. 
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 A little research via Wikipedia in Spanish  and English  and I discovered that linaza was flaxseed or linseed; that lino was flax (Linum usitatissimum), the plant form which linen is made;  and that the seed is the source of linseed oil, as well as being the darling of the health food set for it’s concentration of omega-3 fatty acids and water soluble fiber.
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But what was it doing in a Chilean supermarket?  And more surprising, what was it dong in the local feria, the farmers market? 
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As it turns out, linaza was a common garden crop of the Mapuche, the Indans of South Central Chile, who ate the seeds and used the fiber.  The earliest mention that I found of is in El Cautiverio Feliz, Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán’s account of his captivity by the Mapuche (which I blogged about earlier) in 1629 which suggests a fairly early adoption of this European crop. Two hundred plus years later, In Araucana I sus Habitantes, Ignacio Domeyko (1846)  wote:

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The Chilean Indian is an agriculturalist, an agriculturalist by character, by the physical nature of his country, by his nature and his customs.  … Next to his house he has orchards and gardens of wheat, barley, garbanzos, potatoes, flax and cabbages; all well cultivated and fenced. [1]

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Agricultura, volume 2 (1867) by Claudio Gay provides a little more detail:

The Indians of the Araucania also cultivate flax in great abundance as food.  With the toasted flour of the seeds they make an oily paste, well kneaded in the hands and then, reduced into small balls that are dried and eaten as bread with the name of meldun.  They also mix it with their toasted barley flour to give it better flavor and make it more nutritious; finally the use it in various other ways and it even enters into the composition of their chicha [beer]. [2] .

And in his dictated autobiography Mapuche chief, Pascual Coña, added the following:

To the north, it [flax] grows everywhere spontaneously.  It is also cultivated, its seed, linaza is oily; it is sometimes mixed with toasted flour.  The indigenous women make their brooms from its stems, and in the old days the fibers were twisted to make nets. [3]

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Arte Culinario Mapuche

But how did linaza get from the Mapuche to the Jumbo? We can only guess: Linaza was popular with the Mapuche, especially as murke, a blend of linaza and toasted wheat flour.  Toasted flour, as well as other Mapuche foods, entered the diet of the rural Chilean, often mestizos with Mapuche ancestors.  And when they came to the city, they brought their food habits with them. Toasted flour,  with or without linaza, is popular in Chile, especially as ulpo, a drink of toasted flour mixed with water or milk.  And, according to the vendor at the local farmers market, today people buy linaza mostly for “la digestión­”— love that fiber!
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But how did linaza get to the Mapuche in the first place? 

The flax plant

Flax has a long history in the old world.  Probably domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, the earliest evidence I discovered for its use comes from a linen fabric fragment in an Israeli cave dating to 6,500 BC.  Linen remains from 3,000 BC come from Swiss lake-dweller sites and it was also used in ancient Egypt.[4] Linseed oil and use of the seeds as food and medicine are reported for the ancient Greeks and Romans, and Charlemagne, who was evidently quite a fan, required the incorporation of the seeds into French diet.[5]  In the 13^th century English Franciscan, Bartholomew wrote:

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Flax is needful to divers uses. For therefore is made clothing to wear, and sails to sail, and nets to fish, and to hunt, and thread to sew, ropes to bind, and strings to shoot, bonds to bind lines to mete and to measure, and sheets to rest in, and sacks, bags and purses to put, and to keep things in.  And so none herb is so needful, to so many divers uses to mankind, as is the flax.[6].

And, use of linseed oil in paints has been common since the 1400s and perhaps earlier. [7] 
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By the time of the Spanish occupation of Chile, flax was an important source of oil and fiber, and was evidently cultivated widely.  We can only guess about what led the Mapuche to adopt the seeds as food, since they were not commonly eaten by the Spanish. But the Mapuche ate small native seeds such as quinoa; madi (Madia sativa),and mango (Bromus mango), and I imagine that someone with imagination saw flax seeds going to waste and harvested some. At any rate, by the 17^th century flax was cultivated in Mapuche gardens, and today it is in the Jumbo.
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And why?  Presumably because we like what it does:  linaza, rich in soluble fiber, absorbs water and aids in the transit of food through (and out of) the body. 

Chart: World's Healthiest Foods

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And, because of what some studies say  its Omega-3 fatty acids do for our hearts: 
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Dietary omega-3 fatty acids decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Both epidemiologic and interventional studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of omega-3 fatty acids on many [aspects of heart disease]. …Much of the evidence comes from studies with fish oil and fish; to a lesser extent, data relate to plant-derived omega-3 fatty acids. …Sources of plant-derived omega-3 fatty acids include flaxseed, flaxseed oil, walnuts, canola oil, and soybean oil. Because of the remarkable cardioprotective effects of omega-3 fatty acids, consumption of food sources that provide omega-3 fatty acids--especially the longer-chain fatty acids… from marine sources--should be increased in the diet to decrease CVD risk significantly.[8] 

Those marine sources, especially salmon, are the surest source of protective Omega-3s, but if you have been following this blog, you know that Chile’s plentiful and inexpensive farmed salmon has some drawbacks.  Flax seed, on the other hand, does not.[9]

So, how can you add flax to your diet? .

• Add it to any baked goods: bread, cookies, pancakes, waffles, muffins, etc. 
• Make murke and drink ulpo
• Sprinkle on breakfast cereal or fruit.
• Add to smoothies or yogurt
• Mix with water and take it like medicine (ugg!)
• Add to meatloaf, casseroles, lasagna, etc.
• Google “flax seed recipes” for a lot more suggestions

And remember—a little dab will do you.  Two tablespoons of flax meal provides over 100% of recommendations of Omega-3s and 20% of dietary fiber.

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[1] Domeykmo, Iganicio.  1846.  Araucanía I sus habitantes: Diario del viaje al país de los salvajes indios araucanos.  Santiago: Imprenta Chilena.  p.  52 On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl//temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0001963
[2] Gay, Claudio.  Agricultura. Tomo 2. 1867. Chile: Museo de Historia Natural de Santiago. P. 137. On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl//temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0002688.

[3] Wilhelm de Moesbach, Ernesto. 1936 Vida y costumbres de los  indigenas araucanas  en  la segunda mitad del siglo xix (presentadas en la autobiografia  del  indigena  Pascual Coña). Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Universitario Estado 63.  On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl//temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0008879

[4] A Short History of Flax. Anne Liese's Fibers and Stuff on line at http://www.geocities.com/anne_liese_w/Fibers/fiberflax.htm

[5] Flaxseed, History. World’s healtest foods on line at http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=81#historyuse

[6] Steele,  Robert., 2008 Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus. Forgotten Books  p.75 

[7] History Of Oil Paint, Cyberlipid Center, Resource Site For Lipid Studies  on line at http://www.cyberlipid.org/perox/oxid0011.htm

[8] Psota, TL; Gebauer, SK; & Kris-Etherton, P.  Dietary omega-3 fatty acid intake and cardiovascular risk. Am J Cardiol. 2006 Aug 21;98(4A):3i-18i. Epub 2006 May 30. abstract on line at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16919512

[8] Flaxseed and Flaxseed Oil, Herbs at a Glance, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Mdicicne, National Institutes of Health, on line at http://nccam.nih.gov/health/flaxseed/