If you’re a plant-based eater looking for a serious injection of vegetable protein, iron and fibre, you may want to start paying attention to the latest edible trend to surface from down under.
Lupin flakes have started doing the rounds on wellness menus and are being touted as the thing to add to smoothies and baked goods.
But what are they and why should we be eating them?
We’ve only seen them in the UK very recently and the hype around them seems to have happened overnight but over in Austraila, eating lupins seems to have been a thing for much longer.
Lupin is a flower, the fruit of which is a pod containing several seeds, and it’s these legume seeds that get dried and chopped into flakes.
They’ve been used as a source of food for over 3,000 years around the Mediterranean and longer in South America but they never really took off on the same level as foods like soybeans and dried peas.
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The flakes are similar to couscous – they look and taste the same but have 90% less carbohydrate than couscous and are gluten-free. They really don’t taste of very much which is why they’re being marketed as the perfect addition to salads, dips, smoothies and baked meals; if you’re a plant-based eater, adding a handful of flakes to your meals is going to up the protein and bulk out the meal without adding a load of calories or carb intake (if that’s what you’re worried about).
Made up of 40% protein and 37% fibre, there seems to be a lot of chat around lupin flakes being something of a ‘superfood’. While that might be over-egging the pudding (are any foods really ‘super’?), lupin flakes do seem to have some remarkable macros.
They contain a quarter of the carbs and three times the protein of quinoa – and quinoa is generally regarded as one of the most nutritious, low-GI grains available.
They’re also full of iron, magnesium and potassium, all of which are essential for supporting healthy bones and teeth and for protecting against fatigue. In fact, The Lupin Company claims that the flakes contain three times more potassium than bananas, three times more iron than kale and three times more antioxidants than berries.
The fibre content (one serving claims to be 50% of your fibre RDA) is so high that it’s the equivalent of around 300g of baked beans or three slices of wholemeal bread.
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So why haven’t we heard that much about these ridiculously nutritious legumes until now?
Well, they’ve traditionally been used down under as a means of boosting nitrogen levels in the soil for wheat crops and as stockfeed. Sheep are often fed lupins but it’s only in relatively recent times that farmers have resumed marketing them for human consumption. And after all, if plant proteins can work for one animal, it seems logical that they’d offer similar benefits for us (so long as we’re able to digest them properly).
And as we say, lupins have been eaten by humans for thousands of years – this is just one of those wellness cycles where things come back into vogue.
It’s also worth pointing out that to reap the benefits of these flakes, you can’t just go and pick a lupin plant from the ground because in their raw form, they contain toxic alkaloids and isoflavones which can be very harmful to humans. Those are removed during the manufacturing of the flakes.
The also warns that people who are allergic to peanuts may also react to lupin as they belong to the same plant family as peanuts – reactions can be severe and life-threatening.
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But they don’t come cheap.
A bag of is £12.99 – that’s apparently enough for eight days (based on the recommended 40g per day guideline, delivering 39% of your daily protein and 49% of your daily fibre).
One wonders how much sheep farmers pay for a sack.
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