SPROUTS: Miracle Food for a Nickel a Pound

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Misty L. Trepke

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SPROUTS: miracle food for a nickel a pound THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS

Issue # 12 - November 1971

 

One of the basic tenets of the (Heaven forbid!) Protestant Ethic is

you don't get something for nothing . . . and the way we've allowed

the system to become organized, that's certainly true. In fact, you

could say more than true.

 

Consider the rather small pile of devitalized and fortified,

homogenized and separated, treated, processed, preserved, bleached

and embalmed plastic food the local supermarket just traded you for

that rather large stack of hard-earned bills. Clearly a case, say the

malcontents among us, of getting nothing for something . . . and they

may be right.

 

Well, there is a way out of this dilemma because you can grow your

own completely natural, unprocessed and unpoisoned food at home . . .

on pennies a day . . . fresh all year round. Yep. And unbelievable as

it may sound, you can do it without a degree in agriculture,

omplicated machinery, fourteen kinds of fertilizer or a single,

solitary cubic inch of soil.

 

What's more, you can raise this " garden " anytime and anywhere . . .

in your own kitchen, crossing the country in a camper or sitting on a

flagpole. And finally, the " vegetables " you produce will be many

times tastier, much more nutritious and far less expensive than

anything you can buy. If that's not something for nothing, it's an

awful lot for mighty little.

 

Naturally, since such a food is almost too good to be true, our

Western heritage-famed for DDT, thermonuclear bombs and the pop-top

beer can—has neglected to advise us about it. (Maybe because it's

so hard to exploit commercially?) Yet almost every primitive tribe

and the entire Eastern world—back to the dawn of recorded history—has

made good use of . . . sprouted seeds, or sprouts.

 

SPROUTS: MIRACLE FOOD

 

Sprouts are truly a miracle food. You can grow them almost any time

and any place on only water, air and—sometimes—a little sunlight. You

can produce a new crop every two to six days with a total of, maybe,

10 minutes work. They're more nourishing than milk, fresh meat . . .

or anything: you could live almost indefinitely on nothing but

sprouts if you wanted. They store exceptionally well in a

efrigerator and can even be dried. You can eat them thousands of ways

.. . . on breakfast cereal, in fresh salads, steamed, in scrambled

eggs, sprinkled on soups, in meat loaf, as a major ingredient of the

world's absolutely best tasting and most nutritious bread, fried, in

stews, blended into health drinks, as a sandwich filling, in

desserts, as a snack. And even at today's inflated prices, sprouts

will cost you only moat about five cents a pound.

 

Sprouts, in short, are so fantastically great that if General Mills

or the President's Commission On Poverty had developed them—they

would most certainly be ballyhooed as The Complete, Transcending

Nutritional Miracle Of All Time. Neither God nor Mother Nature

ever hired a press agent, however, so most residents of the United

States eat sprouts only occasionally and only by accident when they

happen to dine in a chinese restaurant.

 

WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

 

And more's the pity. Because a mere twenty or twenty-five million

dollars (pin money in the current federal budget) well invested one

time in sprouting containers and instructions distributed to the

residents of tenant-farm shacks and crumbling tenements across this

fair land . . . could conceivably wipe out malnutrition in the U.S....

completely.

 

That's a sweeping statement, but look at it this way: we think we're

pretty smart here in the U.S. of A. because " with the world's most

technically advanced agribusiness " , we successfully raise enough food

(even though we don't distribute it) to feed our 200 million people

and have some left over to export. Of course we're rapidly poisoning

all our potable water with nitrates and pesticides, we're " farming

out " the top soil in the midwest and we're silting and salting away

hundreds of thousands of acres in the irrigated southwest . . . but,

as they say, " that's the price we have to pay " .

 

Now consider creaky old, backward, underdeveloped China. With less

really fertile farm land, almost no chemical fertilizers and hardly

any modern farm machinery, China also exports grain . . . and feeds

nearly one billion citizens. One billion! A thousand million. Have

you any idea what a tremendous accomplishment that is . . . and how

impossible it would be for our " modern " agricultural system? Pretty

clever, these Chinese. How do they do it?

 

Well one of China's secrets is sprouts. Matter of fact, the earliest

recorded mention of the tremendous food value of germinated seeds

occurs in a book attributed to the Emperor of China about 2939

B.C. . . . and it probably wasn't a new idea even then. Now, five

thousand years later, Chinese cuisine—among the most delicious and

nutritious in the world—still puts special emphasis on sprouts. If

that doesn't make the little beasties " time tested " , nothing will!

 

Now, if you will, reflect a moment on the fantastic difference in

life style that the lowly sprout can wield. Sprouts are home-grown by

nearly every Chinese family, thus assuring each living unit of a

steady supply of high-energy, low-cost food and automatically

eliminating much of the wasteful transportation, processing,

packaging and retailing costs of our " more highly developed " food

production system. The Chinese thus wisely avoid the equivalent of

giant trucks belching diesel fumes as they haul frozen lettuce from

California to Chicago, vast networks of concrete creeping in upon the

last open spaces and sprawling supermarkets selling plastic produce,

which is to say that we are what we eat in far more ways than one.

 

To make a long story medium-length, then, the Chinese have been

relying heavily on sprouts ever since that ancient Emperor wrote his

book on plants and foods . . . and so have a lot of other folks in

the Eastern world and a number of underdeveloped nations. And well

they might, because modern research is continually proving and

reproving the nutritional qualities of sprouts.

 

SPROUTING CONTAINERS AND HOW TO USE THEM

 

You can successfully grow sprouts in any number of common kitchen

containers if you adapt your technique to the equipment at hand. Just

keep in mind that the ideal sprout " garden " provides a warm, dark,

moist—not wet—environment for the developing seeds. It's also a

good idea to use one jar, strainer, pan or whatever exclusively for

raising shoots (to help prevent tainting them).

 

Probably the simplest container of all is a largemouthed quart jar

(use a smaller or bigger jar, depending on how many sprouts you want

to grow at a time). Most folks who use such a jar simply dump in

the seeds, stretch a piece of cheesecloth over the top and secure the

cloth with a rubber band. Others prefer to cut a circle of wire mesh

which is clamped to the jar top by a screw-on canning ring. Either

cover allows convenient and thorough flushing of the shoots every

four to six hours as they develop. Such a sprouting container is

usually kept in a dark cupboard between rinsings. A large bowl makes

an ideal holder for the jar during these growth periods since the

container should be held top down at about a 45° angle to insure

proper drainage of the sprouts.

 

An earthenware flowerpot with its bottom drain hole partially blocked

by cheesecloth or a wad of cotton also makes a good sprout garden.

Unglazed pottery is best because it absorbs water and thus insures

that the shoots will be kept moist but not wet. Cover the pot with a

saucer and set it in a shallow pan of water. Remember, however, that

even though moisture will " wick " through the bottom of an unglazed

flowerpot, the sprouts will still need regular rinsings of clean

water to retard the development of mold.

 

Tea strainers, collanders and coffee percolators are excellent

sprouting containers and—several years ago, while living in Seattle—I

modified two plastic freezing cartons, a small square of screen wire

and a piece of sponge into a " never fail " version of the tea strainer

sprouter (see illustration). The large cans and metal mesh-covered

trays used by commercial sprouters are another variation on the same

idea.

 

In a pinch, seeds can be sprouted between moist towels, sponges or

layers of paper although lack of ventilation usually leads to souring

and molds when using paper and the shoots have an annoying habit of

growing through the towels.

 

Small sprouters are also sold by a few mail order companies but are

usually overpriced and work no better than the quart jar described

here. As a matter of fact, few expensive store-bought sprouters work

as well as the freezer carton-screen wiresponge combination

llustrated with this piece.—JS.

 

MODERN SCIENCE DISCOVERS SPROUTS

 

Dr. Pauline Berry Mack, at the University of Pennsylvania, has tested

sprouted soybeans for VitaminC (the ungerminated seed contains none)

and found that—when sprouted 72 hours—one-half cup of the shoots

contained as much Vitamin C as six glasses of orange juice.

 

Similar incredible leaps in vitamin content have been recorded for

other sprouts. Yale's Dr. Paul Burkholder, for instance, discovered

that oats sprouted five days had 500% more B6, 600% more folic

acid, 10% more B1 and 1350% more B2 than unsprouted oats.

 

It should be noted, of course, that such vitamin increases are not

always a straight-line thing. Vitamin B1—to cite one example—runs up

and down like a yoyo in soybeans as they sprout . . . but the general

trend is always spectacularly up and sprouted seeds are an excellent

source of vitamins A, B-complex, C, D, E, G, K—even U—and minerals

such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, chlorine, potassium, sodium

and silicon. All in natural forms which the body can readily

ssimilate.

 

Furthermore, according to Dr. Francis Pottenger, Jr., sprouted grains

and legumes supply all eight essential amino acids which make

up " complete " protein. Other investigations have shown that many of

the proteins in sprouts are already " predigested " , or broken down into

their constituent amino acids.

 

Sprouts also just happen to be packed full of enzymes—the complex

catalysts which initiate and control almost every chemical reaction

that takes place in living organisms—too. Since the body

gradually manufactures fewer and fewer enzymes as it ages, since

enzymes are killed by temperatures greater than 140° (cooking) and

since our stock of enzymes must be replenished by eating fresh

produce . . . it seems that we've just discovered another dang good

reason for consuming goodly quantities of raw, freshly-grown sprouts.

 

Then too, it's interesting to note that Dr. Loa of Yenching

University in Peking reports that the high level of simple sugars in

sprouts puts the little shoots in the category of " quick energy "

foods, since the monosaccarides they contain require little

digestive breakdown and enter the bloodstream almost immediately.

 

Perhaps most amazing of all—particularly in comparison with the

chemically preserved but nutritionally next-to-worthless foods from

the supermarket—all the body builders which appear as sprouts

grow . . . turn out to be almost perfectly stable. Even after

dehydration or freezing, sprouts retain their enhanced nutritive

values.

 

HOW DO THOSE LITTLE BITTY SEEDS DO IT?

 

But where do all these great things come from? How can seeds full of

fat and starches . . . plus plain old air, water and a little

sunshine . . . add up to vitamins, proteins and enzymes?

 

Simple. During sprouting, those fats and starches are converted into

vitamins, simple sugars and proteins as they absorb the air and

water.

 

Seeds, you see, are divided into two basic parts: a miniature replica

of a plant (the embryo) and a supply of stored carbohydrates, oils

and proteins (the endosperm). When environmental conditions are

suitable—here's where the warmth, moisture and air comes in—a seed

germinates. That is, the tiny embryo feeds upon the endosperm until

it has roots sunk into the soil and leaves opened to the sun.

 

During this process, much of the until-now-inactive endosperm is

converted into readily-available nutrients . . . and that

metamorphosis is the key to the miracle food value of sprouts. If we

harvest the little shoots after the endosperm has been transformed

into rich vitamins, enzymes, amino acids, etc. but before the embryo

gets a chance to consume the nourishment . . . we've got about the

best-for-us food imaginable!

 

Well, the theory is beautiful . . . but what about practical

results? " I'm glad, " said he, in his best W.C. Field's voice, " you

asked that question. " Here are just a handful of astonishing health

cures credited to sprouts:

 

During WWI, Dr. Cyrus French used sprouted peas and lentils rich in

Vitamin C to rid British and Indian troops in Mesopotamia of scurvy

symptoms.

 

In the Philippines, a Dr. Santos cured patients of beri-beri by

administering sprouted mung beans as the only source of B-complex

vitamins.

 

Ann Wigmore of Boston has demonstrated the beneficial effects of

sprouts in retarding and curing problems ranging from diabetes to

ulcers to cancer.

 

Fertility was restored to barren cows at the Agricultural

Experimental Station in Beltsville, Maryland by feeding the animals

Vitamin E-laden oat sprouts.

 

Major Wiltshire of King's College in England, finding that Algerian

laborers in France suffered from scurvy (although they'd been healthy

at home), traced their diet deficiency to commercial beer . . . which

lacks the Vitamin C of their native sprouted millet beer.

 

If you need more convincing, Catharyn Elwood packs a lot of examples

into a few pages of her book, FEEL LIKE A MILLION (Pocket Books,

Inc., 75¢). For now, let's just say that sprouts are powerful food.

 

Inexpensive too. If you buy a hundred pounds of organically-grown

soybeans for fifteen dollars plus freight, say, your cost per pound

will average twenty cents. If you then soak and sprout the beans,

you'll find you harvest four to eight pounds of shoots from

each pound of dry beans. Your cost for the delicious, vitamin-packed

sprouts, then, is less than five cents per pound . . . nothing to

sneeze at in these days of funny money, recession and unemployment.

 

BUT DO SPROUTS TASTE GOOD?

 

I can appreciate questions about the taste of sprouts because I don't

care for cooked okra, turnips, cabbage and a lot of other garden

fare. I do like fresh green salads and raw vegetables, however, and

that's what most sprouts—especially raw alfalfa sprouts—are all

about. Soybean shoots served the same way have a little too much raw

bean taste for me but become magically delicious with only the

slightest (about one-two minutes) steaming. Sprouted wheat goes well

on cereal and is excellent in home-baked bread, rye sprouts add a

mouthwatering wild rice taste when sprinkled into soups just before

serving and sprouted peas are fantastic if lightly steamed and served

with a pat of butter melting down through them. Almost everyone, of

course, has a favorite Chinese recipe built around mung bean sprouts.

 

Which is to say that there's almost as much variety in the taste of

sprouts as there is in " traditional " vegetables. Personal tastes vary

but you're sure to find at least half a dozen " kinds " of sprouts and a

couple of hundred sprout recipes that suit you to a T. Almost any

natural foods cookbook features a great number of ideas for using the

little critters, starting with raw salads and ending with " pick-me-up "

beverages made by blending the shoots with various combinations of

fruit juices, nuts and honey. The possibilities are truly endless.

 

So, if you recognize a good thing when you see it, you're probably

gonna run right out, get you a sprouter and start tapping all the

goodness Momma Nature has locked into seeds. To coin a phrase, " Start

sprouting . . . and start living! "

 

HOW AND WHAT TO SPROUT

 

Almost any seed, grain or legume can be successfully sprouted

although most devotees of the art think that alfalfa, soybeans, mung

beans, lentils, peas and the cereal grasses—wheat, oats, barley and

rye—give the very best results. Unhulled sesame and sunflower,

radish, mustard, red clover, fenugreek, corn, lima beans, pinto

beans, kidney beans, chick peas, cress, millet and nearly any other

seed you can think of will work, however (never eat potato sprouts

though, the plant is a member of the poisonous nightshade family).

 

Select clean, whole seeds . . . the best you can find. Make certain

they haven't been chemically treated in any way, however, because the

poison could have damaged the embryo which might cause the seed to rot

instead of sprout. Needless to say, the treatment might also sicken

or poison you.

 

Wash the seeds thoroughly, pick out any chaff or cracked hulls and

check the grain or whatever for fertility (sterile seeds float).

 

It only takes about a tablespoon of alfalfa seeds and two or three

times that amount of beans or peas to plant " 25-30 square inches.

Soak the seeds overnight in a warm, dark place (such as a kitchen

cupboard) in about three times as much water as you have seeds. The

water should be warm (70-80°) and free of chlorine and flourine

(which can sterilize the tender embryo). Some of the smaller seeds—

alfalfa, clover, etc.—will sprout without this overnight soak but it

won't hurt them.

 

Pour the water off the next morning and save it to add to fruit

juices or use as stock (it's loaded with water-soluble vitamins and

minerals). The seeds will have doubled in size and should be rinsed

carefully to avoid mold.

 

Place the seeds in a warm, moist, dark container. Flush every four to

six hours with water to clean the developing sprouts and to insure

adequate moisture for their growth. Be absolutely certain the seeds

drain well after each rinsing, however, for they'll sour and

rot if left standing in water. Remember too that some heat will be

generated by the sprouts. They'll need a little ventilation so don't

cover them too tightly.

 

In three to six days, depending on temperature (80-90° is best for

most) and seed variety, your sprouts will again have doubled or

tripled in volume and you'll have yourself some mighty good and

nourishing eating. The greater number of shoots are at peak vitamin

potency 60 to 80 hours after germinating . . . but prsonal

references in taste, texture and appearance may persuade you to let

yours grow longer.

 

Soybeans, peas and alfalfa are about right when their sprouts are two

to three inches long. Grain shoots should be eaten when much shorter—

about the length of the kernel itself—or they're bitter. Sunflower

sprouts also develop a rather unpleasant tangy taste when they

exceed the length the seeds from which they develop. The lentil

sprout is best when about an inch long, while shoots from the mild-

flavored mung bean may be allowed to reach a length of three or four

inches before harvest. By the way, some people pluck the seed

hull from each sprout before serving but that's a waste of time and

good nutrition . . . eat the whole shebang!

 

If you expose your sprouts to indirect sunlight during their final

several hours of growth, they'll develop chlorophyl. Too m ch of this

green substance causes the shoots to toughen, however, so don't

overdo it. Some chlorophyl is good, though, because its molecule

is very similar to hemoglobin—the only difference being that

chlorophyl has magnesium at its center while hemoglobin has iron—and,

consequently, acts as a kind of blood booster.

 

You may have some difficulty getting soybeans to sprout successfully,

especially in warm weather, so be particularly careful to use beans

from the current year's crop (this is good advice generally).

Varieties which sprout best include Chief, Ebony, Illini, Lincoln and

Richland . . . and, happily, all beans lose their gas-producing

qualities as they turn into shoots.

 

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