Garden For Nutrition Index

               
Sprouting Safely

Sprouting is the ideal winter garden. It allows you to grow plants indoors to obtain essential B complex vitamins which do not store well during winter.

The sunflower is ideal for sprouting and eating raw for vitamin B1. If tolerated, spelt can be sprouted and cooked for an excellant source of B2. Peas, lentils, and soybeans are best sprouted and then cooked and perhaps even fermented as tempeh for B6 and B2.

Hygiene and temperature control are critical if sprouting is to be accomplished safely. First, soak the seeds for 8-24 hours depending on seed hardness and enzyme inhibitor levels. This will start to unlock the enzyme inhibitors. Keep seeds in the dark and at room temperature. Enzyme levels will start increasing. The complex carbohydrates will begin to convert to simple sugars. The complex proteins will begin to break down into simple proteins. Complex protein are usually more desirable than simple proteins. At the end of the initial soaking, drain the water off and rinse.

Important complex proteins may be lost the longer the sprouting process is allowed to progress beyond the initial soaking. Sproating beyond 8-24 hours, causes sprouts to become very vulnerable to fermentation, since the sugar levels begin to rise dramtically at that point. Longer sproating will not cause gluten to completely break down because many seeds do not sprout adequately.

For sunflower seeds, pour them into a bowl, fill the bowl with water, and the bad seeds will float. Pour off the bad seeds and soak for 8 hours. After 8 hours of initial soaking, the inner hull coating will begin to seperate from the seeds. Rinse and drain several times, but try to keep the inner hulls. The inner hulls contain most of the vitamin E. Raw sunflowers are very digestable after only 8 hours of soaking.

For grains, soak 1 day, and then boil them. For legumes like peas, lentils, and soybeans, soak for 1 day, then boil them. Alternatively, these seeds can then be ferment in the form of tempeh to further increase digestability.

Grains, seeds, and nuts should also be soaked 24 hours before feeding to animals. If given the chance, all on their own, animals will put their grain feed into water to soak before eating it.

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