By Guest Blogger on March 15, 2012
Sprouts are just your everyday seeds, beans or grains taken to the next level in terms of nutrition and deliciousness just by soaking, rinsing and allowing a few days to germinate (sprout) before eating. While you can find many sprout varieties at most health food stores, growing them yourself is fun, easy and much less expensive.
Sprouts abound with antioxidants; they’re full of protein, chlorophyll, vitamins, minerals and amino acids. And talk about good for you: ounce for ounce, they provide more nutrients than any other known whole food. Sprouts also contain beneficial enzymes, requiring less digestive energy, so they actually invigorate you while your body processes them.
Your homegrown sprouts are up-to-the-minute fresh (they grow until ready to eat) and delicious. Grow them right in your kitchen using just seeds, jars and screens. Here’s how!
Getting Started
Beginner Varieties
Any seed, bean or grain is sproutable, but some take a bit more know-how. Easy and tasty seed choices are alfalfa, mustard, radish and clover. Or start with legumes! Lentils, mung beans, garbanzos and green peas are all good choices to start with.
Sprouting Selection
Choose your seeds based on taste preference. If you like the small spouts like alfalfa, which are often used in salads, sandwiches and spring rolls, start with seeds. If you prefer legumes (beans, lentils, peas), which make a killer stir-fry, hearty salad or wonderful soup, start there. Sprouted legumes require much less cooking time than dried and are also more tender.
The legumes you use should be “seed quality,” which are generally recommended for sprouting, as compared to “food quality,” which are intended for cooking. Seed quality legumes are cultivated for sprouting, while food quality are meant for cooking in their dry, unsprouted state, and tend to have a lower germination rate.
Fortunately, it’s becoming easier to find seeds, beans and grains specifically grown for sprouting. These can be found in most health food stores, often right in the bulk bins or specialty shops and are also available online. My favorite online and source is NewNatives.com. Once you have your seeds in hand, store them in airtight containers until you’re ready to use them. Glass jars work well for this purpose.
Setting Up
Growing Supplies
- Wide-mouthed mason jars sized from 1 quart — 1 gallon are recommended, depending on the amount of seed you plan to use.
- Nylon or fiberglass screen to cover the jars
- Rubber bands, or you can use the outer piece of the top to the mason jar to screw over the screen.
- Dish rack or flat, shallow containers for the jars to drain into.
Finding Space
During the germination process, sprouts, like most seeds, prefer a dark, temperate (60 F to 85 F) location, away from drafts and direct heat. An empty cabinet, box or dish rack covered with the cloth all work well.
Step by Step Sprouting
1. Measure out your seeds or beans. In general, 1 oz. of seed yields about 1 cup of spouts, so ¼ cup (for a 2-cup yield), seems to be a good starting point for small seed sprouts since they have a short shelf life. Soaked beans and legumes expand to approximately double the amount as when dried, so plan accordingly.
Place seeds in a mesh strainer or in your spouting jar and rinse in warm (80 F) water, then drain.
2. If you used a strainer for rinsing, pour seeds or legumes into your mason jar. Fill ¾ with water, cap with mesh screen and lid or rubber band and let soak overnight (if prepared in the evening) or for the following times:
- Small seeds: 3-8 hours
- Larger seeds or legumes: 8-16 hours
- Grains: 10-16 hours
*Refer to the Sprout Chart below for more seed-specific soak, rinse and germination details.
3. After soaking, drain the water and rinse the seeds thoroughly. The soaking water is said to contain natural toxins released from the seeds during germination, so a 2- to 3-time daily rinse is recommended.
4. After each rinse, place the jar upside down and tilted at a 45 degree angle in the warm, dark germination spot you’ve selected. The goal is to keep them damp but not soaking in water until they sprout. The warmer and darker the location, the faster they’ll sprout.
5. Let the spouts germinate for the suggested number of days (see chart below). Sprout most seeds 1 to 2 inches, grains up to 4 inches, and beans ¼ to 1 inch. You may want to vary growth time depending on plans for use. Shorter sprouts are great for eating whole; you’ll want then longer if you plan to juice.
6. Small seed optional (skip this step for legumes). Once seeds have sprouted, place the jar in strong, indirect sunlight for 2 to 3 days afterwards to develop some nutrient-rich chlorophyll.
7. When the jar is full and the sprouts or legumes are ready to use, store in an airtight container (a capped sprouting jar is fine) in the refrigerator for use. Note: be sure sprouts have drained for at least 5 hours before storing; too much moisture can cause spoilage.
It is recommended that small seeds be hulled, as in shells of the seeds removed, before placing in the refrigerator. It’s easy to do by soaking in a large bowl of water where hulls will float to the top for easy removal.
Beginners’ Sprout Chart
Once you get the hang of it, sprouting can be rather addictive. You’ll find new ways to enjoy sprouts just so you have an excuse to keep them growing. A complete sprouting chart is available at GrassRootzCafe.com.
Santa Cruz earth mama, change agent and local living advocate, Elizabeth Borelli, is truly convinced that the road to sustainability begins in the kitchen. She offers back-to-basics resources, money-saving recipes and simple health tips designed to empower readers to take control of their health through better dietary choices.
Photo credits: kygp
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By Joel Fuhrman MD on February 2, 2012
Eat Fat or Don’t Eat Fat, That is the Question
The major determinant of your long term health is the nutritional quality of the calories you eat. It is the quality of the fat you eat, the quality of the protein and the quality of the carbohydrate that influences your health.
Ask yourself, is the food I am about to eat a whole, natural plant source of calories? Is it packaged with fiber, antioxidants and phytochemicals? Does it contain not just discovered nutrients, but plenty of undiscovered nutrients too? Or were most of those fragile, but beneficial nutrients lost in the way the food was processed or prepared? These are the questions, to ask yourself, not whether it is a low fat or high fat food.
You may have heard that nuts, seeds and avocados are fatty and fattening and are foods to be shunned. However, recent evidence from many different studies showing a wide variety of health benefits from eating these foods has finally buried this myth. It is important to emphasize that the health problems associated with high fat diets are from consuming animal fats, processed oils and trans fats, not from the consumption of avocados, and raw nuts and seeds. There has never been a study that showed any negative health outcomes from consuming these natural, high fat, whole plant foods. In fact, the studies that have been done only show positive health benefits, and conclude that these foods should be an important part of a well-rounded, healthy diet.
Macronutrients are the three sources of calories—fat, carbohydrate and protein. Americans eat too much of all three and we need to reduce all of them. I intentionally do not give a preferred percentage of each macronutrient in the diet and I do not recommend fat be significantly limited. Trying to micromanage the precise amount of each caloric source misses the most critical issue in human nutrition. The real critical issue in human nutrition is meeting your macronutrient needs without excess, for all three macronutrients, and getting sufficient micronutrients in the process (vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals—the parts of food that do not contain calories). There is a broad acceptable range in the macronutrient ratio as long as one is not overeating calories.
However, adhering to a diet that is less than 10 percent of calories from fat is not an appropriate recommendation for ideal health and often results in less than ideal health outcomes. One could be on a healthful diet that is 15 percent of calories from fat or a healthful diet that is 30 percent of calories from fat too. As long as the diet is rich in micronutrients and does not exceed our need for calories, the lower fat diet has no advantage in the prevention and treatment of disease. There is no evidence to suggest that a diet of equal calories that is much lower in fat is an advantage for prevention or treatment of heart disease or any other disease. Studies that compare dietary fat percentages suggest that it is not the fat level, but other more critical qualities that make the diet more or less beneficial.
To achieve an ideal level of phytonutrients and other micronutrients it necessitates eating a large amount of green vegetables each day. Any diet that does not recommend sufficient consumption of vegetables is lacking. When you eat lots of vegetables, especially green vegetables, you meet your body’s need for fiber and micronutrients with very little calories. Then to comprise the balance of the diet and fill our caloric needs we can choose an assortment of other foods, preferably ones that are of the highest nutrient quality. Unlike some other doctors and authors advocating a plant-based diet, I recommend more vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts and seeds and use less bread, potato, and rice. With the addition of nuts and seeds, which average about 175 calories an ounce, one or two ounces a day brings the diet up to the 15 – 30 percent of calories from fat range. My recommend diet is definitely not under 10 percent of calories from fat and because of the addition of seeds and nuts it is also considerably higher in protein too.
It might seem logical to restrict higher fat foods like nuts seeds and avocado because high fat foods are higher in calories and fat is 9 calories per gram compared to 4 calories a gram for carbohydrates and protein. Of course one should take care not to eat too many calories and adjust the level of these foods to maintain a slim body and not to overeat on them or any other food. However, there are lots of good reasons to include at least some of these higher fat foods in one’s diet.
Evidence is accumulating that a diet as low as 10 percent of calories from fat Is too low, even for the overweight, diabetic or heart disease patient and that the judicious use of these higher fat foods is beneficial for not just heart disease, but for weight loss and diabetes too. The scientific literature corroborates my clinical experience over the last 15 years caring for thousands of patients with obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and provides evidence to show that for every calorie removed from the diet from rice, potato, bread or animal products and substituted with raw seeds and nuts you get many health benefits, such as:
• Lower blood sugar
• Lower cholesterol
• Lower triglycerides
• Better LDL/HDL ratio
• Better antioxidant status
• Better absorption of phytochemicals from vegetables
• Better diabetic control
• Lower weight
• More effective reversal of heart disease
• Prevention of cardiac arrhythmias in heart patients
• More weight loss, not weight gain
• Better nutritional diversity and satisfaction with less calories
• Increased protection against cancer
• Better muscle and bone mass with aging
With the growing awareness of the health properties of nuts and seeds, we must also realize that they must be eaten in moderation. Should we all sit in front of our TV’s, eat the entire bag of nuts in an hour, and complain when we gain weight? Of course not. Healthy eaters avoid excessive calories and do not eat for recreation. Eat only an ounce a day if you are significantly overweight, but if thin, physically active, pregnant or nursing eat 2 – 4 ounces according to your caloric needs.
Originally published September 30, 2009.
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