The "Poppy" is a herbaceous plant typical of the Mediterranean basin and areas with a temperate / sub tropical climate. According to the variety, poppy plants are between 30 and 100cm tall and some of them are famous for producing a latex rich in amazing alkaloids;
The poppies useful for the production of food seeds (to be toasted or for oily production) are instead to be considered "harmless" varieties.
Poppies for oil
The poppy seeds used for the production of the oil belong to two botanical varieties:
- Papaver nigrum, also said Mediterranean poppy or black-seeded poppy (originally from Turkey and structurally very similar to the white opium poppy)
- Papaver setigerum, also called silk or oil poppy (spontaneous in almost the whole Mediterranean basin and also in Italy); botanists think that many other varieties of poppy derive from this species, such as Papaver somniferum and the above Papaver nigrum.
Nutritional Properties
Today, the use of poppy seed oil plays a marginal dietary role; it is used in Central-Eastern Europe only for confectionery production, while the extraction and retail sale are exclusively of an artisanal nature. The poppy seed oil has a very pleasant nutty taste and from the organoleptic point of view it is very more valuable than peanut oil or other seeds; it boasts the same chemical characteristics of linseed or sweet almond oil (due to the content of polyunsaturated fatty acids) even if (entering the "nutritional detail") the ratio ω3 / ω6 is different.
Although it can be considered an "obsolete" food, poppy seed oil has a very ancient history ...
The first to use poppy seed oil in a relevant way were the Gallic populations (or rather, the Celts, the Aquitans and the Belgians); they occupied: France, Belgium, Switzerland (in which, among the various archaeological finds, seeds of Papaver setigerum), The Netherlands, Germany (along the western bank of the Rhine) and northern Italy (north of the Esino river), where they settled from the 8th century BC to 400-500 AD; the Gallic poppy crops for the production of oil they were mainly located in Germany, Flanders and throughout Central Europe.
In Paris, in the sixteenth century, poppy seed oil was still consumed because it was less expensive than olive oil and above all less subject to rancidity (probably due to the lower concentrations of water, since [contrary to what can be deduced] the quantity of polyunsaturated fatty acids is far greater than poppy seed oil).
From the eighteenth century onwards, perhaps confusing the papaver nigrum with the papaver somniferum, the rumor spread that the oil could be harmful to health; consequently (despite the denials of the medical community) its consumption was almost totally abandoned; its sale was abolished by the French parliament, an order later revoked (as for that of rapeseed and rapeseed oil) only in 1774 thanks to the investigations of Abbot Rozier.
Poppy oil is a good seasoning fat, but based on some medical and nutritional insights (albeit dated), it is also very useful:
- In the treatment of intestinal constipation
- In the remission of scrofulous affections [chronic infections of the lymphatic glands due to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (tuberculosis bacterium), which in an advanced stage causes foul-smelling abscesses in the neck, armpits and groin, disfiguring those affected]
- In the remission of rickets
- As an emollient in bladder affections
- For topical use: in tampons, in the remission of ulcerations and skin inflammations; smeared for cleaning and hydration of the same.
Nutritional values
Poppy seed oil is made up of 99.9% lipids and contains only a few traces of water.
