According to my friend and colleague Loren Cordain, Ph.D., author of The Paleo Diet, the first book on the subject, studies that were conducted to see whether humans could absorb the omega-3 fats in chia seeds proved that indeed they could. There was only one hitch: The researchers had hoped to prove that these omega-3 fats would reduce inflammation. But in fact, inflammation markers in the subjects who ate chia seeds went up slightly, rather than decreased, as had been expected.7 You may be getting some omega-3 fatty acids from chia seeds but their lectin content outweighs any benefit.
