Viruses, Sprouts, Immune Systems and Us
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist, Cancer Survivor
February/March 2020 - Mother Nature’s Moment
These are indeed strange times. We feel it is vitally important to keep on the “sunny side” if you will, as we face down uncertainty. With that top of mind we are reminded that our lives, our health and our safety depends in large measure on our continued care for ourselves and the planet we live on.
One way that Gilbert and I maintain our health is to engage in sprouting seeds. We just recently taught a short class on this subject at the Chicago Botanic Garden. As most of us will undoubtedly be spending more time at home in the near future, and boosting our immune systems seems like a great activity to engage in, I would like to share a few basics on indoor farming so you could try it too. You have everything to gain by trying it. It’s easy, it’s inexpensive, it’s fun, and a lot less work than traditional gardening (but we still love that kind too) and also a wonderful activity to do with children and seniors.
Because there is almost as much overwhelming information about sprouting on the internet as there is on COVID-19, our goal is to make it as simple as possible. There are at least three ways to sprout seeds. I am going to focus in this article on one of the easiest, jar sprouting. Some cool facts about sprouts are that every seed contains:
• vitamins
• minerals
• enzymes
• proteins
• fats
• carbohydrates
…in enough quantity to build a healthy plant, (and healthy people)!
Each seed also contains bitter enzyme inhibitors that are designed to stop spoilage and deter animals from eating them. However, as soon as a seed is watered, those bitter compounds are washed away. Try soaking almonds, walnuts, or pecans for 8 hours and then do a side by side taste test with the un-soaked nuts. You will never eat them again without first soaking, because they are so sweet. Also, when you soak nuts (seeds) you are deactivating toxins which are evolutionarily designed to harm and deter animals like you from scavenging them. As further proof, you'll need to refrigerate those soaked nuts or they will quickly spoil.
Amazing truth: Raw sprouts contain anywhere from 10 to 20 times the amount of vitamins and minerals as their full grown organic vegetable parents! That makes them really powerful “medicine”. As a recent cancer survivor, I know that every honest “get healthy” diet study plan recommends that we eat MORE vegetables. That’s because they are nutrient dense and calorie poor. Sprouts are the super heroes of the vegetable world. They pack the biggest bang for the buck. It takes hundreds of times more water and resources to grow adult plants then it does to grow sprouts.
Below is a picture tutorial to grow sprouts in a jar. The seeds I used in this demonstration are organic mung beans, garbanzo beans and green lentils. We use exclusively organic seeds because as licensed spray applicators we know about the regulations surrounding pesticide use and don’t want to be ingesting toxins with our food if we don’t have to.
Great resources for purchasing seeds/nuts for sprouting/soaking can be obtained from:
The Sprout House: www.sprouthouse.com and Food to Live: www.foodtolive.com
Ways to incorporate sprouts into your diet:
Add sprouts to your sandwich instead of lettuce
Create hummus from sprouted chick peas/garbanzo beans (email me for recipe)
Add sprouts to your salads
Just eat them like nuts…that’s what I do. ;)
Juice sprouts into your green drinks
Use sprouts in larger quantities as garnish on your entrees, knowing how incredibly nutritious they are!
Put the sprouts into any soup recipe or prepared soups to way boost the nutrition and protein in the meal. Sprouted beans have the complex proteins broken down into more digestible amino acids so they don’t cause gas.
These are the seeds in a bag as they come from the vendor.
Here I have taken about a 1/2 cup of “seeds” and placed them in a one quart clean and sanitized (in dishwasher cycle is fine) glass Ball jar with wide mouth lid. I have removed the metal insert and replaced it with a piece of plastic screening. You can also order “sprout ease lids” on line which do the same thing.
Here are the seeds in the jar with the lid in place, sitting on my counter.
Here I am filling the jar with nice clean water, filtered or distilled water is best, but tap water will work.
Now the jar is full of water, with the beans on the bottom of the jar. This is the soaking stage when the ’magic’ begins to happen. Enzymes that inhibit the seed germinating (or growing) are washed away. Leave the jar like this , full of water over night.
In the morning pour all the soaking water out of the jar and rinse them once or twice, if you like, while keeping the lid in place. That screened lid is part of what makes this so easy. You can be sure of good air exchange and you can rinse = water the seeds without removing the lid!
For three days I leave the jar on the edge of my sink like this. That reminds me to water or rinse them once in the morning and once in the evening.
By day two you will begin to notice little roots coming out of your seeds. The miracle of sprouting has begun. They only need the light that is available in your kitchen. They are fine with it being dark at night.
By day 3 your seeds are ready for harvesting and have become sprouts, yippee. They are ready to eat! The garbanzo sprouts have only very little “roots” that just stick out about 1/16” - 1/8”. Don’t worry, they are perfect that way.