Contents
What Is Maca Root?
What Is Maca Powder?
Maca Powder Benefits
How to Take Maca Powder
Maca Powder Recipes
Is Maca a Superfood?
Where Can I Buy Maca Powder in the UK?
What Is Maca Root?
Maca Root (also known as Peruvian Ginseng) is an ancient root that has been used in natural medicine for millennia. Maca is a great source of micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, fibre, and antioxidants. In fact, maca contains amino acids and fatty acids, magnesium, potassium, zinc, copper, selenium, B-Vitamins (and more!) It’s been called a superfood, and it is classified as an adaptogen. Maca root can be ground down into a natural, healthy powder which tastes great and has a number of potential health benefits, leading to it becoming popular in health and fitness circles.
What Is Maca Powder?
Maca Powder is the ground-down form of the natural root. It is how you’ll find maca presented as a supplement because it’s so easy to use. It tastes slightly sweet and a little bit earthy, like a natural malty caramel powder. We love it!
Maca Powder Benefits
Maca is packed with micronutrients including vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It contains twice as much calcium as milk, three times more vitamin C than an orange, and five times as much iron as spinach! So even if you have no particular health issues to address, it’s a brilliant addition to your healthy diet. But what if you do want to use maca as a natural health food? As an adaptogen, maca powder can help the body cope with various stresses and can help with weight loss, hormone imbalances, and sleep problems.
Maca Powder & Weight Loss
Taking maca powder could help with your weight loss goals, mostly thanks to its energising boost! Most people find the natural stimulant effect of maca gives them a surge of energy without any side effects, so your NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) will go up and you’ll work harder in the gym, too! That means more calories burned. Plus, the calories in maca are so low, it won’t throw you off your diet.
Maca Powder & Sleep
Maca powder could help you sleep better, with its soothing adaptogenic effect and balancing hormonal impact. To assist with sleep, try it stirred into hot milk or even hot chocolate before bed, or add it to your final protein meal.
Can Maca Help with Libido & Hormone Imbalances?
Maca is thought to help with male fertility issues, female hormone imbalances, and sex drive for both sexes. It could be particularly useful for women experiencing hormone imbalances, including women with PCOS or menopausal women. Some reports say it helps with low mood and anxiety as well as sex drive and libido. It’s certainly worth a try, as it has no reported side effects!
Boosting your Energy with Maca
Maca can also be used to boost energy, mood, and even memory. Add maca powder to snacks or hot drinks for an energy boost which can gently make you feel more awake and focused, without any jitters or crash. It could even help with energy and stamina – useful as part of your pre-workout snack if your training session requires endurance.
How to Take Maca Powder
There are loads of ways to enjoy maca powder in drinks, snacks, or baking recipes. It can be stirred, sprinkled, and added into a variety of snacks and foods. You can use maca root powder in hot drinks, in yoghurt, in smoothies, in your protein oats, in protein baking recipes. Maca powder added to hot or cold milk is one of the easiest ways to enjoy this supplement.
Maca Powder Recipes
As well as drinks and snacks on the go, maca powder can also be added to recipes and used in cooking. How about making maca powder protein ice-cream with your favourite protein powder, frozen banana, maca, milk, a pinch of xanthan gum plus extra ice? Maca powder is also a wonderful addition to protein baking recipes like muffins, cupcakes, microwave mug cakes, breads and loaf cakes. It has a natural caramel taste and beautiful golden colour which is ideal for cooking. Check out The Core™ for lots of recipes just waiting for a teaspoon of maca powder.
Is Maca a Superfood?
Maca has been called a superfood because of its incredible list of nutritional benefits. It contains a long list of micronutrients, including vitamins, minerals, fibre, fatty acids, amino acids, and antioxidants. It’s 100% natural and has no known side effects.
Where Can I Buy Maca Powder in the UK?
Our Maca Powder is 100% pure, vegan, and gluten-free, and even contains an added boost of protein. If you’d like your maca in an even more convenient form, try our maca tablets.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicola Joyce has been writing for (and about) sport, fitness, nutrition and healthy living since 2004. She’s also a keen sportswoman: her background is in endurance sport but she now competes as a natural bodybuilder, most recently winning a world title with the INBF. When she’s not writing content, she can be found blogging. Follow her here www.nicolajoyce.co.uk and on Facebook & Twitter (@thefitwriter) too.
