Home sprouters aren’t limited to the few commercially grown sprouts sold in grocery stores. There are many types of seeds you can sprout in your kitchen year round: lentil, mung bean, radish, mustard, adzuki, sunflower, clover, quinoa, chia, flax, and more. Home sprouting opens the door to variety and to the following five benefits:
1. Living Superfood
Sprouts are live, alkalizing superfoods exploding with energy and nutrients that literally make your meals come alive.
Microgreens, the bigger greens such as sunflower greens and pea greens and grasses such as wheatgrass, barley grass and rye grass, are a very rich source of chlorophyll.
Chlorophyll’s chemical structure is almost identical to the hemoglobin in our red blood cells. While chlorophyll has magnesium in its center, hemoglobin contains iron. Otherwise the chemical composition is the same. This is the reason why green drinks full of chlorophyll are good for re-building the blood.
2. Pure and Un-Processed Food
Always make sure your sprouting seeds are organic!
With all the environmental toxins and chemicals our bodies are exposed to on a daily basis, sprouts offer a rare toxin-free food choice easily assimilated and utilized by your cells.
Many raw food advocates believe you can detox your body, clean out accumulated garbage from fat cells, and rebuild a healthy glowing body with pure living food.
The abundant nutrients in sprouts are the real deal, designed by Mother Nature.
3. Economically Responsible Anywhere Anytime.
Home sprouting provides fresh food year round for pennies on the dollar.
Wheatgrass is commonly sold at juice bars in the United States for more than four dollars a shot, while homegrown wheatgrass costs 33 cents a shot.
Alfalfa seeds cost around eight dollars a pound. One pound of alfalfa seed will produce more than ten pounds of alfalfa sprouts. That same eight dollars can get you four, two ounce packages of commercially grown sprouts. And since store-bought sprouts have been harvested prematurely, shipped, and shelved, they are not fresh and they don’t last very long.
It pays to be a home sprouter!
4. Great for Weight Loss/ Ideal Weight Management
Sprouts are a low calorie food with a super high nutrient value. By including sprouts in our diet, we provide the body with the energy and nutrients it needs to cleanse, detoxify, and rebuild itself.
5. The Rewards of Home Gardening
It is rewarding to be a home gardener and to eat your own fresh produce. Gardening is a green thing!
It’s easier to sprout indoors where you can control the growing environment than it is to grow food in an outdoor garden where you are up against insects, animals, extreme temperatures, and long growing periods. Your sprouts will be ready from a few days to a few weeks depending on what type of seed you’re growing. For instance, lentil sprouts will be ready in two to three days, whereas greens like wheatgrass need to grow for two weeks.
When I was living in Austin, Texas I spent hundreds of dollars constructing a garden and bringing in premium organic soil. I diligently watered my precious heirloom and cherry tomatoes for weeks. As they were ripening the birds came in. My dog, who loves to case birds on walks, ignored them. What kind of garden patrol is that? The next day I saw a squirrel with a yellow heirloom running up the pecan tree!
I went inside and rinsed my sprouts and was so thankful for indoor gardening! At least I got to harvest my sprouts. They were still pulsing with life, an abundant source of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals ready to nourish me and not the squirrel!
Remember, sprouts are a time tested superfood that has been eaten for 5,000 years. When will you start your indoor garden?
