![[]](/sites/all/modules/ubercart/uc_cart/images/bullet-arrow-up.gif "Expand cart block."){kind=icon}
There are no products in your shopping cart.
User Login
| 0 Items | Total: $0.00 |
Raw in the Now
Satisfy your inner gardener with a constant crop of nutrition.
Soy sprouts were used in ancient China to cure rheumatism and grow hair; Captain Cook brewed a malt from sprouted beans to protect sailors from scurvy. Prized for their high nutritional content and crunchy, fresh taste, sprouts are currently a favorite of raw foodists, gourmet restaurants, and health researchers alike.
Sprouts begin as dry seeds, beans, or grains, then germinate (or sprout) when soaked in water and drained. “They’re just on the verge,” says Paddy Lawrence, general manager of the Bay Area raw food restaurant Café Gratitude. “Sprouts contain all that energy and readiness for growth; the plant is still alive and will keep growing until you’re ready to eat it.” The variety is tremendous: consider nutty sunflower sprouts sprinkled on salad; spicy mustard or radish sprouts to perk up a sandwich; sweet, crispy mung bean sprouts sautéed with fresh veggies. Because they’re baby plants, sprouts contain a high concentration of the nutrients needed to sustain plant growth. Sprouting increases their nutritional value and converts starches to simple sugars, so sprouts are not only packed with vitamins, enzymes, and protein, but are also easy to digest.
“Over the past 15–20 years, sprouts have moved from the health food market to the mainstream,“ says Barbara Sanderson, owner of the New England company Jonathan’s Organic and one of the founders of the International Sprout Growers’ Association (ISGA). But even though you can purchase a wide variety of sprouts at local markets and chains like Whole Foods, it’s surprisingly easy to sprout your own seeds. “Get inspired by what you see at the farmers’ market,” says nutrition educator and healing foods chef Angela Huang. “Be the farmer yourself.” Because you can sprout year-round in your own kitchen, sprouting is an easy way to satisfy your inner gardener whether you live in a sprawling farmhouse or an urban high rise. Either way, the rewards come quickly. “You can eat them anywhere along the way— you can start tasting even after a day,” notes Sanderson. Kids, are especially delighted by the speedy results (generally 4–7 days for the whole process), and sprouting cultivates both their desire to grow food and their pleasure in eating greens.
“It’s also much more economical to do it yourself,” says Huang. In most natural groceries, a pound of beans costs $1 or less and produces a hearty amount of food (a quarter pound of mung beans, for example, makes four cups of sprouted beans at a cost of about 25¢). To avoid seeds treated with fungicides, Sanderson suggests buying organic seeds from a health food store or from www.sproutman.com. At sproutman, a pound of organic red clover seeds costs $7.49; a one-pound mixture of bean sprouts
goes for just $3.29.
For a tasty variation on sprouted seeds, try sprouted nuts. At the San Francisco–based company Living Intentions, nuts are soaked in water, activating the dormant enzymes and nutrients and transforming fats into healthier amino acids. Drying the nuts at low temperatures protects the live enzymes and nutrients and leads to scrumptious products like Sun-Dried Marinara Almonds and Pistachios. At Café Gratitude, sprouted cashews make creamy cheeses, sprouted almonds are turned into hummus, and nut milks become flavorful ice creams.
Sprouted seeds or beans likewise add zest to many dishes. Sanderson notes that leafy green sprouts like clover are perfect for barbecues, more nutritious than lettuce and better able to cling to a burger. Among her favorite sprout recipes: Jonathan’s Sprouts Tabouleh featuring sprouted peas, lentils, and adzukis, and Bean Sprout and Pesto Pizza made with mung bean sprouts. When baked into breads, sprouted wheat berries or quinoa create a nutty flavor.
And while chefs and home cooks appreciate the taste and versatility of sprouts, scientists are studying their many health benefits. At the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Paul Talalay isolated a compound in broccoli, sulfurofane, that helps the body to ward off cancer cells; in broccoli sprouts, the cancer-fighting strength is 20–50 times greater than that in the mature plant. The Annual Review of Nutrition cites sprouts as a significant dietary source of phytoestrogens, which play a role in the prevention of menopausal symptoms, heart disease, and osteoporosis.
Scientific research has also brought advances in sprout safety through the development of highly sensitive tests to detect bacteria in seeds. Sanderson notes that the industry is highly attentive to food safety and that the FDA regularly inspects sprout companies and teaches safe manufacturing techniques.
For many, sprouts symbolize the rewards of a diet rich in raw foods. “As the raw foods movement spreads,” notes Lawrence, “people are becoming much more aware of how their bodies respond to different foods, feeling a change when they eat more raw foods and less meat and dairy; people are experiencing live and sprouted foods and feeling healthy and energized.”
Sprout it Yourself!
You don’t need any special knowledge, talent, or expensive equipment Paddy Lawrence starts with just a mason jar and a mixture of alfalfa, clover, fenugreek, mustard, and radish seeds. Here’s her kitchen sprouting method:
SPOON two tablespoons of your seed mixture in a jar, cover it with a screen or cheesecloth, then screw the lid on.
FILL the jar part way up with water, soak the seeds for 8 hours, turn upside down, drain, rinse, then drain again.
RINSE and drain each morning and night, leaving the jar upside down in a dish rack; in 4-7 days the sprouts will be ready.
SWISH them in a bowl of water until the hulls come off. Enjoy them as is or add a handful to
your next salad or stir-fry!
