Its that time of year again. I love Wikipedia.
Here are some fun facts about pumpkin seeds.
Pepita (from Mexican
Spanish:
pepita de calabaza, "little seed of squash") is a Spanish culinary term for the
pumpkin seed, the edible
seed of a
pumpkin or other
cultivar of
squash (
genus Cucurbita). The seeds are typically rather flat and
asymmetrically oval, and light green in color inside a white
hull. The word can refer either to the hulled kernel or unhulled whole seed, and most commonly refers to the
roasted end product. The pressed oil of the roasted seeds of a specific pumpkin variety is also used in
Central and
Eastern European cuisine (see
Pumpkin seed oil).
Pepitas are a popular ingredient in
Mexican cuisine and are also roasted and served as a snack. Marinated and roasted, they are an autumn seasonal favorite in the rural
United States, as well as a commercially produced and distributed packaged snack, like
sunflower seeds, available year-round. Pepitas are known by their Spanish name (usually shortened), and typically salted and sometimes spiced after roasting (and today also available as a packaged product), in
Mexico and other
Latin American countries, in the
American Southwest, and in speciality and Mexican food stores. In the Americas, they have been eaten since at least the time of the
Aztecs and probably much earlier, since squash was one of the three earliest
plant domesticates in the
Western Hemisphere, along with
maize (corn) and
common beans (collectively the
Native American agricultural "
Three Sisters", originating in Mexico).
The seeds are also good sources of
protein, as well as
iron,
zinc,
manganese,
magnesium,
phosphorus,
copper, and
potassium. In regards to iron, 25 grams of pepitas (about a US quarter-
cup) can provide over 20 percent of the recommended daily iron intake).
Whole seeds or kernels
According to the
USDA, one gram of roasted pepita contain 5.69 mg
L-tryptophan and one gram of pepita protein contains 17.2 mg of L-tryptophan. One cup of milk contains 183 mg. This high tryptophan content makes pepita of interest to researchers studying the treatment of
anxiety disorders. Some eat the seeds as preventative measure against onset of anxiety attacks,
clinical depression and other mood disorders.
Some studies
[which?] have also found pumpkin seeds to prevent
arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and to regulate
cholesterol levels in the body.
[edit] The oil
The oil of pumpkin seeds, a culinary speciality in (and important export commodity of)
Central European cuisine as a
salad oil and a cooking oil, is also used to treat
irritable bowel syndrome and various other ailments, both in
folk medicine and in modern medical practice and research.
Long an Eastern European folk remedy for the
prostate problems of men, the oil has in fact been shown to improve symptoms associated with an enlarged prostate due to
benign prostatic hyperplasia. Components in pumpkin seed oil appear to interrupt the triggering of prostate cell multiplication by
testosterone and
DHT. It is questionable whether eating the seeds whole in snack quantities, rather than taking therapeutic doses of the concentrated oil, would provide any prostate benefit.
In
German folk medicine, the oil is also used to quell parasitic infestations such as tapeworms.
In Vietnam, consumption of relatively large numbers of seeds was seen to increase the evacuation rate of thread worms from the gastrointestinal tract.
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