Do you crave a big bucket of popcorn when you go to the movies? How about at home when you fire up your DVD player to watch a late-night flick with your sweetie?
As it turns out, popcorn is one of the healthiest snacks you can eat (far healthier than the much-touted edamame) and polyphenols are the reason why.
Polyphenols are a type of chemical found in plant foods that help neutralize free radicals, those nasty little baddies that damage your cells and contribute to rapid aging.
Popcorn has one of the highest levels of polyphenols of any plant food – including most fruit!
According to Joe Vinson, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at the University of Scranton:
“Popcorn has more antioxidants in total than other snack foods that you can consume and it also has quite a bit of fiber.”
While the fiber aspect of popcorn is not particularly impressive to me as fiber is not necessarily a good thing in large quantities (people just need so much of it as they are typically so constipated from their lousy diets), the polyphenol aspect of the research is indeed compelling and should encourage folks to fire up that popcorn maker more often.
Don’t Buy Microwave or Processed Popcorn
As with any food, preparation and sourcing are critical, so don’t run out to the supermarket and load up on microwave popcorn after reading this post. It also would be wise to avoid popcorn at the movies as the synthetic factory fats and processed salt used to flavor the popcorn is less than ideal and overrides any benefit of the popcorn itself!
One other type of popcorn to skip: popcorn in snack bags specifically packaged for lunchboxes which are loaded with all manner of chemicals and synthetics for flavoring and coloring.
The healthiest popcorn is made yourself the old fashioned way on the stovetop. Popcorn makers are ok too, but in my experience, the stove is just as fast and easy with less cleanup. Popcorn is so cheap, most people will find that a nice big bag of organic kernels easily fits into even the tightest of food budgets.
The best oils to cook your popcorn in include homemade ghee or a quality brand of expeller-pressed coconut oil.
After popping, sprinkle with a good quality sea salt to complete your delicious and healthful snack. Some folks I know sprinkle with nutritional yeast powder for a nice boost of B vitamins.
Even though homemade popcorn is a fantastic and healthy snack choice, don’t overdo it. Corn that is not soaked or sprouted prior to cooking contains anti-nutrients that can inflame digestion if consumed to excess.
By the way, if someone in your family is allergic to corn, try popped sorghum. It looks and tastes the same, just smaller kernels.
How to Make Stovetop Popcorn (Video)
Below is a video I filmed for the Weston A. Price Foundation on Healthy Snacks. Click here for a transcript if you don’t prefer videos. The video includes a segment on making healthy popcorn. This visual can be helpful if you’ve never made it on the stovetop before. This is the healthiest way to enjoy it!
Organic, preferably heirloom corn kernels popped on the stovetop is a great snack to pack in your children’s lunchboxes. It is very affordable and you can feel good about making it!
Source: Study: The Snack Loaded with Antioxidants
Sarah Pope has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. Her work is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.
Her work has been covered by major media including USA Today, ABC, NBC, and many others.
Chickens Dying from Fowl Light Bulbs
I’m going to send it with my son to his pre-K tomorrow. Though I fully expect that his teacher will, AGAIN, not give him his snack. In the three days he has been in school she has let him have the class snack twice. The snacks so far have been a graham cracker and icing sandwich, frosted animal crackers with chocolate icing to dip them in, and a pretzel rod with a cup of caramel ice cream topping to dip them in.
This is supposed to be the top rated public pre-K in my state.
There are zero health benefits to popped corn. The heat it takes to “pop” corn damages all cellular structure and potential nutrient molecules, which is part of the polyphenol dynamic – There are no vitamins, no proteins etc – just starch – which converts to more sugar which contributes to the rise in childhood obesity and early onset diabetes.
I love popcorn, but I don’t ever “assume” it’s health benefits – there are none, it just tastes darn good. Oliver Leslie
discusting that they think that’s snack and healthy
That’s really awful, Erin! When you bring it up to her, what is her excuse? You go to all this trouble to pack a healthy snack and then they feed him junk food against your wishes…just criminal! Sometimes, explaining that he has a food allergy or sensitivity or that a doctor has recommended these specific snacks can help…. Good luck!!
Have you ever considered homeschooling? Nutrition was not the only reason we chose to switch to homeschooling but was a big consideration. There are all sorts of homeschool groups that have lots of group activities, field trips and co-op classes but all the nutritional issues are left up to the parent. We didn’t find that we missed out on anything after we left our traditional school which was one of the best in our city but found that we gained so much in the ability to tailor our children’s schooling to them personally and their interests, learning style and, of course, our family’s values including nutrition. Just thought I’d suggest it. Wish I had thought of it earlier myself and gotten started sooner. Good luck!
Erin, I am sure that the reason they are not giving your child his snacks, is because of the sugars. Why icing, frosting and caramel, come on?? I wouldn’t want a kid bouncing off the walls from a sugar high either. Not to mention, no nutrition at all. Try apples, oranges, fruit leather, cheese, etc. my sons favorite for the longest time was seaweed. But that is because I started him young. So they aren’t “grossed out” by it. Why not give him a good start with healthy eating habits, you really aren’t doing him any favors by sending that crap. Just my opinion
wait…are you saying THEY, give him that, if that is so I would get absolutely furious. That is horrible. Just realized that it has been a while(about 2 years since this post,lol) hope you got results from the school, and hope your little guy is doing great.
So much better than the Made in China Whole Foods snacks we just posted about.
We love popcorn here! popped in coconut oil, drizzled with butter, sprinkled with sea salt.
Popped in coconut is my favourite! I love the scent it gives off***
popcorn gives me heartburn. and corn tortilla chips. i’m assuming it’s the sugar?
It’s probably the rancid fats.
love it…as long as it is not genetically modified :)))
What popcorn or corn are you buying that is not GMO / Monostat?
there is no gmo popcorn, but who knows if the different varieties of corn can cross pollinate.
All corn In the US is GMO unless specifically stated otherwise, GMO corn is ubiquitous – and dangerous, we don’t eat corn/ corn products for this reason. Trader Joes does have organic popcorn kernals sometimes,
Hi Robbi: According to Jeffrey Smith (the authority on GMOs), there is no GMO popcorn on the market. I got this from http://www.foodconsumer.org under the non-GMO shopping guide for snack foods. It says: “SNACK FOODS: Look for snacks made from wheat, rice, or oats and ones that use sunflower or safflower oils. There is no GMO popcorn on the market, nor is there blue or white GM corn.”
Robbi I am with you on that, I will not eat any corn product to me it is the worst food out there and after all corn is used to fatten up the animals to make a bigger profit
I agree that the farmers that just try to fatten up the cattle do use corn, but I also think the other part of the story is the hormones and the steroid mélange that the non-organic farmers employ. I kind of think this discussion about corn is not too different than one about Cannabis: why would corn be harmful to us if it is natural to this planet?
Take the GMO’s out of the equation, couple corn with other veggies and it is a healthy meal. Or, cook homemade popcorn with single origin olive oil, or coconut oil, use non-steroid/non-hormone real unsalted butter, use Himalayan Salt, add a few pinches of Cayenne Pepper (if you can do hot spice), and Homemade Popcorn is a decent snack.
I don’t think demonizing corn is the way to go on this one. Demonizing GMO’s is a worthwhile effort, on the other hand. For us to criticize corn and label it a terrible food, I would wager, flies in the face of human evolution and its relationship and dependence on plant life for survival. Ancestors of North American peoples might feel quite strongly to the contrary.
please tell me why my body hates corn? I had fresh popped popcorn in coconut oil yesterday and I felt like death later. The same goes for any corn product I touch. It is the same with gluten and usually rice. I am darn happy I like eggs, chicken, beef and fish! =D
Sara – it is your body telling what you should and should not eat. We humans assume we can eat anything and everything on the planet – so long as we know how to process it, to make it more digestable or flavorful perhaps. This is wrong. Like every other species, we should be eating only a few things – and water.
We have so many “signs” we don’t listen to (or hear, and ignore) like heartburn and indigestion, or allergies or lactose issues or diarhea or any number of hundreds of things that tell us this is not right for our body.
Now they have pills you can take at the start of your day to ward off heartburn or indegstion – u and i know the best way to do that is to stop injesting the thing that caused the problem in the first place.
We only need a few simple nutrients and water to live healthy – unfortunatly, mans diet has evolved, for the worse, to where we are eating so many things, and so many things that aren’t natural – cookies (there is no cookie tree), mayonaise, yogurt (where is this river of yogurt?), pies, vodka, cigarettes, popcorn, aspirin, cocaine, soda, ice cream, bread – bread doesn’t exist anywhere in the natural world – neither does candy, chocolate, coffee, hotdogs, sausages, cheese…
Don’t get me wrong, I eat all of the above, I’m just sayin. Oliver Leslie
From my research, your body needs healing and that’s why it cannot process corn. Heal the gut. It can take a few years to do this though 2 years seems to be a common number. The GAPS diet is wonderful for healing. There are many out there who have been unable to eat many types of food and then heal their gut and voila, they can eat them. Staying away from irritants is obvious but does not heal, it’s merely a crutch.
Eating grains is biblical but I do personally stress properly preparing them, using organic and a variety (kamut, spelt, etc) and not over-indulging in them. I do not buy into that line that grains today are nothing like Jesus’ day as there have been varieties discovered in tombs from thousands of years ago that are the same as today. Cheeseslave.com has some good info on healing the gut as she went through this. Tons of info out there!
I love popping popcorn on the stove! Yum! And, so much easier and tastier than microwave popcorn.
I saw someone else asked, but how do you know if it’s not GMO? I haven’t seen “organic” popping corn at any of my usual go-to stores…
i don’t know where you are located, but i order organic popping corn through azure standard.
Whole Foods has organic popcorn in the bulk bins. Our local Co Op also carries it but i have seen Organic popcorn at our local Smith’s/Kroger grocery store. I think it might have been Jolly Time brand.
Jolly time popcorn is not GMO
Monostat…that’s funny. But you bring up a good question….
Wow! I had no idea popcorn was healthy. We got tons of it in our CSA last year and it is still sitting in the cupboard. I don’t make it much because I figured it wasn’t that good for us.
I just love posts like this that validate something I love. I could eat popcorn all day. So glad it’s not guilt-inducing! Hip hip hooray.
Trader Joe’s has organic popping kernels
Hi Sarah,
I made a batch of soaked//dried pecans and they were delicious! Next, I did some cashews and they looked so gross I haven’t touched them.
Good news about popcorn. :o) I love popcorn and have given up microwaved and adopted making it the healthy way.
Thanks for the video.
Jan, don’t be discouraged by the cashews…they tend to get slimy if soaked for a long time, and I’ve also experienced them turning slightly purple. I just rinse them well and dry–they turn out fine:)
I only soak cashews for 2 hours if i have small pieces, 3 if they are larger. I get them from Azure standard, they have whole, large pieces and small. Small is cheapest and if you are going to chop the anyway, it a smart buy. we still soak them but for a very short time.
I get organic popcorn in the bulk bins at Whole Foods… but I believe Arrowhead Mills also makes some (available at most health food stores). However, most popcorn is NOT genetically modified. The GMO corn that we’re all thinking of is a very different type of corn and is used to make high fructose corn syrup, etc. It is not edible like corn should be – it could never be used for popcorn.
My son’s favorite snack 🙂 He begs for it 5 days out of 7
I can’t do corn. There’s a reason they use it to fatten up animals, and apparently it does the same thing to me.
This is the best news of my life!
Air popped popcorn is so quick, easy, healthy and clean! I’m never going back to stove popped corn again. We love popcorn here (in Australia).
Now I can stop feeling guilty about making popcorn so often! Our little family loooves popcorn, especially my 2 year-old. She asks for it every day, and we make it on the stovetop in coconut oil. YUMMY!
Is there a reason you recommend using expeller-pressed rather than unrefined coconut oil? While I use expeller-pressed for most cooking, I love the taste of the unrefined on popcorn.
I use extra virgin coconut oil. I was wondering if expeller pressed was different.
Expeller-pressed is more neutral tasting. I prefer it for most cooking, since the unrefined coconut oil imparts a distinctive flavor. I use the regular, extra virgin coconut oil for popping corn, however. I was wondering whether Sarah recommended the expeller-pressed for a reason other than the neutral flavor. The expeller-pressed, while only minimally refined, is still a healthy oil, but I think most would agree that the unrefined is at least somewhat healthier.
I love my popcorn cooked in bacon fat, drizzled with grassed butter, sea salt.
I’m SO going to try cooking it in bacon fat!!!
yeah, i do it like that sometimes too. delicious!
I have used both and honestly I can’t notice much flavor difference. Neither can my boys and they don’t particularly care for coconut…