What Is Sprouting?
Sprouting is the practice of
germinating seeds to be eaten either raw or cooked. Sprouted foods are a convenient way to have fresh vegetables for salads, or otherwise, in any season and can be germinated at home or produced industrially. They are a prominent ingredient of the raw food diet and common in Eastern Asian cuisine. Sprouting is also applied on a large scale to barley as a part of the malting process. A potential downside to consuming raw sprouts is that the process of germinating seeds can also be conducive to harmful bacterial growth.
The Benefits Of Sprouting
Sprouts are potential energy unleashed. The sprout is the youngest growth of a seed or nut, when the enzyme inhibitors have been released and the food has become enzyme rich. Sprouts, which are quite diverse, are abundant in chlorophyll, a very rich source of protein, and a high-energy food providing a wide range of nutrients.
Sprouted seeds also have more nutrition than their dry predecessors. Some types of sprouts have as much as five times their original nutritional value. A sprout is the baby plant, so it puts an enormous amount of energy into getting those first few leaves out. The sprouting cycle of a plant’s life is where it has the most concentrated nutrition. This is because the sprout wants to become a plant and it knows that it must get a root in the ground and a leaf up to the sky. Once rooted, survival will be much easier. Much like all creatures, sprouts go through their most rapid development at this early stage. The equivalent in humans would be learning to walk or talk; for a sprout, it is creating a wide range of enzymes and vitamins and
minerals to get a good start in life. The young sprouts and grasses contain the highest amount of chlorophyll that the plant will ever attain. Sprouts
are very nutritious and have many rejuvenating benefits.
Best Seeds For Sprouting
All viable seeds can be sprouted, but some sprouts should not be eaten raw. The most common food sprouts include:[citation needed]
Pulses (legumes; pea family):
alfalfa, clover, fenugreek, lentil, pea, chickpea, mung bean and soybean (bean sprouts).
Cereals:
oat, wheat, maize (corn), rice, barley, rye, kamut and then quinoa, amaranth and buckwheat (these last three are used as cereal even if botanically they are not)
Oilseeds:
sesame, sunflower, almond, hazelnut, linseed, peanut.
Brassica (cabbage family)
broccoli, cabbage, watercress, mustard, mizuna, mustard, radish and daikon (kaiware sprouts), rocket (arugula), tatsoi, turnip, watercress.
Umbelliferous vegetables (parsley family) - these may be used more as microgreens than sprouts.
carrot, celery, fennel, parsley.
Allium (onions) - cannot really distinguish between microgreens.
onion, leek, green onion (me-negi in Japanese cuisine)
Other vegetables and herbs:
spinach, lettuce, milk thistle, lemon grass[citation needed]
Although whole oats can be sprouted, oat groats sold in food stores, which are dehulled and require steaming or roasting to prevent rancidity, will not sprout. Whole oats may have an indigestible hull which makes them difficult or even unfit for human consumption.[citation needed]
All the sprouts of the solanaceae (tomato, potato, paprika, aubergine or eggplant) and rhubarb cannot be eaten as sprouts, either cooked or raw, as they can be poisonous.[1] Some sprouts can be cooked to remove the toxin, while others cannot.[2]
With all seeds, care should be taken that they are intended for sprouting or human consumption rather than sowing. Seeds intended for sowing may be treated with chemical dressings. Several countries, such as New Zealand, also require that some varieties of imported edible seed be heat-treated, thus making them impossible to sprout.[citation needed] Quinoa in its natural state is very easy to sprout but when polished, or pre-cleaned of its saponin coating (becoming whiter), loses its power to germinate.
