Carob

Question
I thought I read some years ago that carob (chocolate subsitute) was bad for your teeth.  

If you know any info about that it will be appreciated.

Thanks in a advance.

Answer
Hello Sallie!

    Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving holiday. Carob is very rich in different types of sugar and can cause cavities if you eat too much of it. Carob is an evergreen tree with pinnately compound leaves (have 2 to 6 pairs of oval leaflets), which can grow to a height of 15 meters and be very handsome. Nevertheless, this species is grown around the world primarily as a food crop, for its sweet and nutritious fruits.
    The fruit of carob is a pod, technically a legume 15 to 30 centimeters in length and fairly thick and broad. Pods are borne on the old stems of the plant on short flower stalks. Interestingly, most carob trees are monoecious, with individual male and female flowers. The dark-brown pods are not only edible, but also rich in sucrose (almost 40% plus other sugars) and protein (up to 8%). Moreover, the pod has vitamin A, B vitamins, and several important minerals. They can be eaten directly by livestock, but we know carob mostly because the pods are ground into a flour that is a cocoa substitute. Although this product has a slightly different taste than chocolate, it has only one-third the calories (total 1595 calories per pound), is virtually fat-free (chocolate is half fat), is rich in pectin, is nonallergenic, has abundant protein, and has no oxalic acid, which interferes with absorption of calcium. Consequently, carob flour is widely used in health foods for chocolate-like flavoring. A very fine polysaccharide gum--mucilaginous, odorless, tasteless, and colorless--can also be obtained from the pod and is now used in many products. There are also several putative medicinal uses of the plant, and singers formerly chewed the pod husks in the belief that this clears the throat and voice.

Hope this helps!

-George Rapitis, Bsc. Nutritionist
www.dietitian.mymagicwand.com
www.juiceblend.com

Author of "Ask the Nutritionists" book
at www.authorhouse.com  

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