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 Research shows health benefits in lupin food 

Research shows health benefits in lupin food

28 Aug, 2009 02:00 AM
THE WA Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR) is helping promote the lupin as a healthy food product for humans, with some more positive results gathering in the pipeline.

WAIMR centre for food and genomic medicine manager, Carolyn Williams, said her organisation currently had seven different lupin research projects on the go, all linked to the one aim of fighting the "epidemics" of diabetes and obesity.

The project is an extensive industry collaboration that combines the resources of WA's four universities, Murdoch, Curtin, UWA and Edith Cowan, and the CSIRO, Agriculture and Food Department, Health Department, hospitals and other medical research organisations.

Ms Williams is overseeing the project that also links with grower groups like CBH, Coorow Seeds and Irwin Valley.

Irwin Valley is supplying lupin flour for the clinical trials.

The lupin research project is entering a critical timeframe, having reached the final year of a four-year term.

Ms Williams said the results had so far been encouraging.

"What these trials have shown so far is that the people who are eating the lupin flour foods have experienced reduced blood pressure," she said.

"There will be more data released in the lead-up to the project's deadline at the end of June, 2010.

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What good news. How strange it has taken this long, but not surprising considering the history. Back in the middle seventies when a few of us started growing white lupins, Uniwhite, I think was the first variety, we formed the Lupin Growers Association and fought a long and bitter battle, with the then Farmers Union and Wolfe Boetcher to try and stop lupins from falling under the control of the Grain Pool, because we were concerned that they would just disappear, and become another commodity. We developed our views based on research as to the value of white lupins as a food for humans. There was a man in Fremantle who dehulled and milled them into flour. At a meeting at Watheroo, where Boetcher threatened to sue us, we ate scones and bread containing lupin flour. We lost the battle, McPharlin reneged on a deal. Lupins became a commodity, never to realise their early potential as a food for home consumption. Instead we have wasted thirty years selling them as stock feed. As an aside, one of the pioneer growers, Stan Peck, conducted the first feeding trials on the potential of white lupins to increase libido. He always had a pocket full and was constantly chewing.
Posted by Roger Crook, 28/08/2009 6:09:28 AM, on Farm Weekly

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WAIMR centre for food and genomic medicine manager Carolyn Williams (left), Curtin University food science research officer Syed Nasar Abbas, and Curtin University associate professor Vijay Jayasena with some of the healthy and nutritional food products, made using lupin flour through the WAIMR project.
WAIMR centre for food and genomic medicine manager Carolyn Williams (left), Curtin University food science research officer Syed Nasar Abbas, and Curtin University associate professor Vijay Jayasena with some of the healthy and nutritional food products, made using lupin flour through the WAIMR project.

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