Hi, Bronwen!

I did a Google search to find out if Amaranth is a cereal grain.  It is not.

         http://www.dietobio.com/dossiers/en/cereals/amaranth.html

'Amaranth is not a true grain [snip]. It is a tiny grain that has been
growing for thousand of years in Mexico, Central and South Africa, Nepal
and India."

'However amaranth is low in amino acid leucine, another amino acid needed
for the body functioning, but leucine is found in excess in most common
cereals grains."

According to my Webster's, Amaranthus is a family of coarse herbs including
pigweeds.

However, Amaranth is a seed, with all the problems that brings.  A plant's
first responsibility is to grow and multiply, which it can't do if other
creatures keep eating its seeds.  So the apparent best way for most plants
to try to keep going is to put toxins in their seeds to make them
unpalatable to the rest of us.  We are probably better off eating the flesh
(fruit) that surrounds the seed.

Apple seeds, anyone?

Jane
Tucson, AZ  USA

At 10:31 PM 9/18/03 -0700, you wrote:
><snip>
>ALso- I recently got a book on edible plants in CA - and alot of them
>require some sort of processing in order to eat them, I was wanting to pick
>and eat.  like Amaranth- on the side of the road- it is a grain- yeah?  I
>used to eat alot of it in my macrobiotic days.
>
>so i dont know what I am saying- it seems people used quite a bit of native
>grains and alot of processing, am I wrong?
>
>Bronwen