Chia’s Moot Point: Are They Good or Are They Bad?

A reliable source (my mother) recently shared the story of her friend’s daughter’s chia plight.

It went like this: said friend’s daughter had been on a quest to lose weight and as such followed a distinctly regimented eating routine for the whole of six months before beginning to experience severe stomach aches that manifested first as period cramps, then gas, then a big question mark that could have, with the right dose of neuroses, led to a number of hypothetical ailments, some of which — terminal. MFD (mom’s friend’s daughter) rightfully decided it was time to nip the question mark in its curved spine and visited a doctor who specialized in gastrointestinal pain.

She explained her symptoms and he dutifully recommended she get an MRI, which she did. And when the results came in, so did a little demon named Every Healthy Eater’s Nightmare. MFD had been eating so many raw chia seeds since she changed her diet that some of them found the environment so hospitable, they began to grow roots on her organs.

As in, SHE WAS BECOMING A HUMAN CHIA PET. Rumor now has it she is scheduled to undergo a surgery that will remove the seeds and their roots from her intestines, and all I (empathetic narcissist that I am) can think is that I eat chia seeds like, 3/7 mornings a week for breakfast.

This is precisely where my Persian mother would step in to remind me that Americans do not understand a very vital concept for long term survival — moderation — and that as long as I’m not sprinkling raw chia seeds over everything that I eat I am most likely in the clear. But I can’t help ask, if every nutritionist both under and over the sun are recommending chia consumption, citing exactly zero negative side effects and yet someone is growing a freaking internal chia plant, how “good” could they possibly be?

Personal horror stories welcome. I’m reverting back to Oreos.

Illustration by Hannah Kellner.

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