Fresh Sprouts are a Whole Food, Filled With Enzymes and Nutritional Value! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AlkalizeForHealth
"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease." A "raw foodist" is someone who eats at least 50% raw food 100% of the time. Watch the DVD "Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days" Raw foods are excellent sources of enzymes.
Raw foods include: People in North America are so deficient in enzymes that enzyme therapy may help with almost any health condition. The highly colored coats of beans contain abundant anti-cancer chemicals. People who eat more beans have less cancer. Research recently came out of Johns Hopkins University that found three-day-old broccoli sprouts to be loaded with the anti-cancer chemical sulforaphane. The sprouts are said to lack the flavor of mature broccoli that some people find unpleasant. You might even try growing them yourself. - www.drweil.com Broccoli sprouts contain 20 times as much as glucoraphanin than mature broccoli. Glucoraphanin converts to cancer-fighting sulforaphane in the body. Sulforaphane prompts the body to make an enzyme that keeps tumors from forming! Sulforaphane also kills H. Pylori, the microbe that causes stomach and duodenal ulcers. - Dr. Robert Jay Rowen's Second Opinion September 2002.
Mastic may also kill H. Pylori. Add one ounce of 3% hydrogen peroxide to one pint of water and soak your seeds overnight. Add the same amount of hydrogen peroxide each time you rinse the sprouts. This will help them sprout and prevent mold. A small amount of 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide can be added to sprout water to keep sprouts free of mold. Use a test strip and aim for about 30 ppm. Our experience is that organic grains and legumes are more likely to sprout than inorganic grains and legumes. When you are eating your sprouts, it is unpleasant to bite down on a hard seed that has not sprouted. Making sprouts at home is so economical that there is no reason not to use organically grown seeds. Most "raw" nuts sold in stores are not raw, they have been pasteurized or otherwise treated to kill salmonella. These nuts are dead food and will not sprout. Buy organic nuts and test them in your sprouter to make sure they are living food. You can soak nuts overnight to inactivate the enzyme inhibitors and then dehydrate them to create a healthy snack. Blend them with water to make nut milk. Grind them to make a nut loaf. There are lots of recipes on the Internet. Cabbage eaten raw, cooked or juiced helps detoxify the body by killing all types of harmful viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens in the stomach and intestinal tract. - Dr. David Williams. Live bacteria in sauerkraut help maintain a population of healthful bacteria within our digestive system. Be sure to purchase your sauerkraut from the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Learn how to make fermented foods such as sauerkraut, yoghurt, kefir, and kvass. The pancreas produces a fluid called pancreatin that contains many enzymes. These enzymes include amylase to digest carbohydrates, lipase to digest fats, and protease to digest protein. If the pancreas becomes exhausted then the resulting inability to properly digest and metabolize carbohydrates, fats and proteins can cause many difficulties. Enzyme deficiency is implicated in over 200 diseases including: Enzyme supplements are available in health food stores and online. Everyone should eat a few enzyme tablets with each meal or between meals or before going to bed. Fluoride interferes with the functioning of many enzymes in the body. Reverse osmosis is the only water filtration method we know of that can remove fluoride from drinking water. Ideally you should drink water that has never been fluoridated. What was the staple food of Roman gladiators? A porridge made of barley and beans. Buckwheat sprouts in large quantities can cause skin tenderness and photosensitivity. You are unlikely to chew enough buckwheat greens to cause a problem, but when juicing or blending large quantities problems can arise. Other popular greens do not seem to cause difficulties. "If God did not make it, do not eat it." A diet of fresh whole foods is best.
| Sprouts are a fun way to create economical fresh organic greens in your own kitchen. The time tested way to make sprouts at home is with wide-mouthed mason jars. The opening is covered with cheese cloth held in place by a rubber band. Or use one of the new metal mesh metal mesh screens instead of cheese cloth. We also like the "Easy Sprout Sprouter" because it takes up less room than tilted mason jars. There is much information on the Internet and videos at YouTube.com regarding how to make sprouts. Basically you put some seeds in the mason jar and cover them with water. After soaking 8 to 12 hours, the seeds are drained, rinsed, and then the jar is propped at a 45 degree angle so that the water can continue to drain while the seeds are exposed to air. Continue to rinse and drain the seeds every 12 hours until the sprouts are ready to eat. Eat a few every time you rinse to find the point where they taste best. This is all you need to get started. Enzymes are needed in the fight against cancer. Cooking at temperatures above 116°F / 47°C destroys enzymes. Instead of cooking, why not try sprouting? "Germination initiates a chemical transformation in the seed grains that naturally neutralizes the phytates or enzyme inhibitors..." - The Maker's Diet, page 138. Soaking grains, nuts, seeds and beans overnight triggers the onset of the sprouting process and deactivates the enzyme inhibitors. Just soaking them overnight before cooking makes them much easier to digest. Take any edible seeds, nuts, grains or beans, soak them in water overnight and they should swell up. These are called "pre-sprouts". Many of them will now be ready to eat without any cooking at all. If not edible, then rinse them and continue soaking and rinsing for two or three days. Letting the sprouts grow longer is optional. Putting the sprouts in a window so they turn green is also optional. Just soak your seeds, nuts, grains or beans for 24+ hours and then try eating them. If you like the taste then they are ready to eat. You can soak seeds overnight and then dry them in the open air or in a dehydrator prior to grinding them into healthy flour devoid of enzyme inhibitors. Or soak nuts overnight and then dry them in a dehydrator. They are now ready to eat. Protein is made of amino acids. The adult human body requires 20 different amino acids. The human child requires 22 different amino acids. Eight of these amino acids are called "essential amino acids" because they must be obtained from diet. The remaining amino acids can be manufactured in the body using the 8 essential amino acids as building blocks. The eight essential amino acids are isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. Plus, histidine is an essential amino acid for human infants. Unfortunately, lysine can be destroyed by heat starting at about 110°F / 43°C, with higher temperatures bringing greater destruction. Lysine is used by the body in the fight against both cancer and heart disease. The essential amino acid tryptophan may also be damaged by heat. A good source of lysine is uncooked beans. A good source of tryptophan is uncooked grains. Organic cold-processed whey powder is a good source of both lysine and tryptophan. Chia seeds contain all nine essential amino acids. The amino acid score of chia is 115%, which makes it better than eggs. We highly recommend chia seeds, particularly for vegetarians. Eat them at every meal mixed with other foods. Chia is a superfood, containing 30 nutrients. There is much information about chia on the Internet. Tryptophan is used by the body to make protein, serotonin and melatonin. Tryptophan creates calmness and helps you sleep. Sprouts for world peace? Nutrients damaged or destroyed by heat include the proteins lysine and tryptophan, and the vitamins thiamine (B1), pantothenic acid (B5), B6, and ascorbic acid (C). However, heat can be beneficial in that it destroys a non-essential amino acid in raw eggs called avidin that when unheated will combine with the vitamin biotin (B7) rendering it useless. Raw fish contains a enzyme that destroys the vitamin thiamine (B1). And so it goes. There needs to be a balance between raw and cooked foods. It is no longer safe to consume raw animal products. Raw fruits and vegetables do contain protein. However, your best plant sources of protein are nuts, seeds, grains and beans. As we mentioned above, nuts, seeds, grains and beans contain enzyme inhibitors. These enzyme inhibitors can be deactivated by cooking. However, cooking can also destroy some of the amino acids. Therefore, we conclude that a better way to deactivate the enzyme inhibitors is sprouting, and the sprouts can be eaten raw or lightly steamed (put them in your stir fry just before serving) so that we can obtain the full measure of protein that they contain. To protect nutrients when cooking, you should always cook with water, thereby ensuring the cooking temperature never exceeds the boiling point of the water. Properly cooking certain foods can make the foods more appetizing, starch breaks down into simple sugars that can be digested, and the food is softened thereby increasing the availability of nutrients. It is nice to have some warm food each day. Certainly it smells good, with various aromas being carried to your nose by the steam. Just avoid high temperatures and don't cook your food to death. Cooking destroys 25% to 100% of the nutrients in food depending on the cooking method. Lightly steaming food destroys about 25% of certain vitamins and other nutrients. Microwaving food can destroy up to 100% of some nutrients. Plus, frying, deep-frying, baking, roasting and microwaving at moderately high temperatures can create carcinogens such as acrylamide in the food.
Grains and beans each contain all of the essential amino acids, but tend to have more of some than others. In order to have an abundance of ALL essential amino acids, it is useful to eat both sprouted grains and sprouted beans each day. It is not absolutely necessary to eat them at the same meal because the body can store excess amino acids for a time, but for protein synthesis to take place all the essential amino acids must be present in the body simultaneously. The manna bread eaten by the ancient Essenes was not cooked. Rather it was simply dried in the desert sun. Uncooked manna bread made from sprouted grains may be available in your local health food store.
"Moisten your wheat, that the angel of water
may enter it. Then set it in the air, that the angel of air may
embrace it. And leave it from morning to evening beneath the
sun, that the angel of sunshine may descend upon it." The bread recipe called Ezekiel Bread ("And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt, and put them into a single vessel, and make bread of them." - Ezekiel 4:9) provides all the essential amino acids in good balance. Most large beans need to be cooked, even if sprouted. However, it is possible to pre-mix a few of your favorite grains and small beans to create a sprouting mix that does not need to be cooked. Our favorite choices for the "beans" in uncooked Ezekiel Bread include adzuki beans, chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans), green peas and mung beans. For making Essene or Ezekiel flatbread, you can sprout grains and small beans for three or four days. These sprouts are quite small and taste like green peas fresh in the garden. Then grind them using the grinding attachment of the Omega juicer. The sprouts are filled with water so the resulting mush is quite moist. The Essenes would spread their mush on a hot rock and dry it in the desert sun. You can spread the mush on wax paper or parchment paper and dry it for a few hours in an Excalibur dehydrator. This is possible because the Excalibur blows warm air across the trays rather than through them. The result is plain, uncooked, digestible flatbread. To improve the taste, sometimes people add sesame seeds to the sprouting mix, add raisins during grinding, eat them with jam or raw honey, or use them as raw pizza crust. When eaten fresh, the Ezekiel mix makes a sprout salad, and can be added to soups and sandwiches or sprinkled on your dinner. It is a new experience to be eating salad for its superior protein content. This sprout salad makes a great emergency food. It requires no electricity or sunlight, very little water and can be eaten raw. This is a sprout salad you can make in an underground shelter, campsite, or arctic settlement. The mush of ground sprouts that is used to make flatbreads can be eaten as mush instead. People with no teeth or difficulty chewing may enjoy this uncooked mush with a bit of salad dressing. Those with intestinal or digestive problems (for example Crohn's disease or other intestinal obstruction, problems with the stomach, etc.) may be able to eat this raw sprout mush. Good choices to sprout:
Good choices to soak
Beans that must be cooked even if sprouted include: anasazi beans, black beans, blackeyed pea, fava beans, great northern beans, red kidney bean, lima beans, navy beans, pinto beans, and soy beans. At high altitudes where water boils at a lower temperature, these beans should be cooked in a pressure cooker. You will soon discover your favorites. For some of these we prefer to sprout hulled seeds (barley, millet, oats, sunflower). A diet including lots of fresh sprouts and raw foods provides an abundance of enzymes necessary for good digestion, cancer prevention and the maintenance of good health. There is much information on the Internet. The average North American eats twice as much protein as is required by the body, resulting in depletion of the body's protein-digesting enzymes. The body's requirement for dietary protein (when derived from plant sources) is one half gram of protein per pound of body weight. A 100 pound person needs about 50 grams of plant protein per day. This is a very small amount of protein. It is almost impossible to eat a diet of fresh fruits, vegetables and sprouted grains and beans and not get enough good quality protein. Plus, these plant sources of protein provide enzymes, fiber and more than twice the minerals and vitamins as provided by meat.
Sprouts are living foods, easy to digest and filled with enzymes, proteins, complex carbohydrates, essential fatty acids, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Everything your body needs in a form that your body can use! Sprouts are economical, easy to make and nutritious. Simply by sprouting the grain or bean you have eliminated the need to cook it. No need to bake bread, or to cook your beans for hours to make them digestible. Just sprout and serve! Amazingly, even shelled sunflower seeds will sprout. You can make sprouts anywhere, even while camping. Pack in the dried grains, seeds, nuts, and beans and produce fresh vegetables in your campsite! Sprouts are environmentally friendly. They eliminate the need for cooking fuel, and reduce the generation of greenhouse gases.
Sprouts are whole food. Eating sprouts gives you the full nutritional value of the food. Nothing has been processed out, no chemicals or preservatives have been added. The essential oils have never been exposed to the air so they are not rancid. The enzymes have not been destroyed by cooking. Sprouts are just simple, natural, wholesome food. Sprouts taste great in a bowl with a bit of salad dressing, mixed in with other leafy greens, stuffed into a sandwich, sprinkled over your dinner, or used as a garnish on soups. Sprouts can also be stir-fried or steamed with other vegetables, or added to veggie burgers. Sprout your wheat and make wheat grass juice as an alternative to eating bread. "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." - Isaiah 40:6 Use clean filtered water to soak your sprouts overnight. Then pour the water on your house plants. Flax is an exception. The soaking water turns gelatinous and is OK to eat. Chia seeds are also gelatinous. We soak 2 tablespoons of chia seeds in 3/4 cup of juice overnight. The result is a chewy drink that we have as part of breakfast. Search the Internet for chia recipes and the benefits of eating chia seeds. Chia seeds are a good source of omega 3 fatty acids, protein, antioxidants, soluble and insoluble fiber, plus many vitamins and minerals. Go to YouTube.com and watch some of the many videos on "chia benefits".
We suggest that at least half of what you eat should be raw. The raw food half of your diet involves more than just salads, which is just as well because the human physiology is no longer fit to chew greens all day. Your larger brain came at a price - the enlarged skull has a correspondingly smaller and weaker jaw muscle when compared to other primates. The raw food diet stands on four pillars: sprouts, fresh and fermented fruit & vegetables, juices, and soaked nuts & seeds. We use four mechanical aids to facilitate our raw food diet: sprouter, juicer, blender/VitaMix, and dehydrator. For breakfast we eat mostly fruit plus our glass of soaked chia seeds as described above, and seven almonds that were soaked overnight. The VitaMix can be used to make veggie shakes or fruit smoothies in all seasons. Cover the fruit or veggies with water before turning on the blender, or you will just end up with a mush. However, if you want mush it can become the basis for good applesauce, baby food, chip dip, or uncooked soup. When adding fruit or veggies to the VitaMix, this is a good time to sneak in some extra nutrition such as lecithin granules. Juices use a far greater quantity of raw ingredients compared to smoothies, so we tend to make juice "in season" when the fruits or vegetables are less expensive. Our favorite juices include carrot+greens, carrot+beet, carrot+cabbage. An exception to this is wheatgrass juice that you can make all year round from wheat grass grown in your sprouter. Barley grass and oat grass offer variety. Also, if any sprouts grow too long, tough and stringy, we throw them in the juicer together with a carrot, apple and whatever else is handy. Seeds of all sorts can be sprouted in your sprouter. These sprouts can be used in various ways. They can be a salad all on their own - just add dressing. They can be added to other foods such as sandwiches and soups. They can be ground up and used to make Essene bread as described above. Some sprouts turn into nice salad greens after a few more days of growth. Find a good sprout recipe book and it will show you a great many tasty meals to prepare from your sprouts. Start by buying your sprouting seeds in small quantities until you know your favorites. Then see if you can find a wholesaler or other source that will sell you organic sprouting seeds, chia and nuts in bulk. Then the above raw food diet becomes very affordable and not terribly time consuming. You can be healthy and live comfortably largely on food you grow in your own home.
Recommended reading: Altschul, Aaron M. Proteins, Their Chemistry and Politics, Basic Books, New York, 1965. This book provides the scholarly analysis of protein complementarity that is the basis of a successful vegetarian diet. A meat & milk based diet requires 3 1/2 acres to feed one person, whereas on a vegetarian diet one quarter acre can feed a person. Also, the meat & milk based diet requires 2,500 gallons of fresh water per day per person, compared to only 300 gallons of fresh water per day for a person on a vegetarian diet. The number of people who can live on this planet and their impact on the environment is largely determined by their diet. Boutenko, Victoria, Green for Life, Raw Family Publishing, 2005. Lappe, Frances Moore, Diet for a Small Planet, Ballantine Books, New York, 1992. This book explains the principle of protein complementarity that is the basis of the vegetarian diet. By combining a grain and a legume you produce a protein that is as good as animal protein. Examples include: rice and lentils (rice and dahl - India), corn and beans (Mexico), chick peas and wheat (falafel sandwich - Middle East). This famous bread recipe takes full advantage of protein complementarity: "Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself." - Ezekiel 4:9. A high protein plant diet provides twice the vitamins and minerals of a meat diet, and vastly more fiber, phyto-nutrients, and other required nutrients. Meyerowitz, Steve, Sproutman's Kitchen Garden Cookbook: 250 Flourless, Dairyless, Low Temperature, Low Fat, Low Salt, Living Food Vegetarian Recipes, Sproutman Publications, 1999. Meyerowitz, Steve, Sprouts The Miracle Food: The Complete Guide to Sprouting, Sproutman Publications, 1998. Wigmore, Ann, The Sprouting Book, Avery Publishing Group, 1986. Ann Wigmore has published a number of books and we recommend them all. Page Summary By cooking food improperly and at too high temperatures, carcinogens are formed and many nutrients such as lysine may be ruined. Society has adopted a diet that is mostly cooked food and mostly food cooked at too high temperatures. A result of this is an abundance of cancer, heart disease, arthritis, etc. A new balance needs to be found, with at least half the food being uncooked, and the cooked half being minimally processed and cooked at low temperatures not exceeding the boiling point of water. We are not advocating a 100% raw diet. Properly cooking certain foods can make the foods more appetizing, starch breaks down into simple sugars that can be digested, and the food is softened thereby increasing the availability of nutrients. Cooking increases the number of different foods that we can eat. Plus, it is nice to have some warm food and a hot drink on a cold day. On the other hand, nutrients are damaged by exposure to air, light and heat, and lost in discarded cooking water. For maximum nutritional benefit, whole foods should be eaten raw when possible and processed minimally when necessary. Cooking temperatures should be low and cooking times should be brief. We suggest that a mix of sprouted grains and sprouted small beans eaten raw provides a better quality protein than does any form of cooked food. Raw organic dairy or cold-processed organic whey are good if you can get them. But other animal products such as conventional dairy, eggs, poultry, fish and meat can be very unhealthy if you try to eat them raw. For good health it is very important that a significant percentage of your nutrition, including protein, come from raw foods. The mush of ground up sprouted grains & beans that we use to make our flatbread (described above) can also be mixed with pet food for healthier pets. Raw, soaked organic almonds can be used to make almond milk that is better in many ways than pasteurized (cooked) cow milk. (The "raw" almonds sold in grocery stores have been pasteurized and are, therefore, not really raw. They will not sprout. They are dead.) Enzymes are found in raw food. People do not eat enough raw food and are overtaxing their pancreas and becoming deficient in enzymes. Raw foods such as sprouts tend to be economical, highly nutritious, and a good source of enzymes. We recommend that everyone learn about sprouts and other raw foods, prepare them at home, and let raw foods be about half of your total food consumption every day. Raw food includes unpasteurized fermented foods such as sauerkraut that contain beneficial bacteria necessary for a healthy gut. Sprouts are a good source of vitamins, minerals, essential oils, fiber, protein and enzymes. Sprouts help you get off the top of the food chain, away from pesticides, preservatives, rancid oils, and highly processed dead food. Sprouts are economical, easy to grow, and offer genuinely superior nutrition. Combined with eating raw fruit and vegetables, juicing, blending, soaking, dehydrating, and steaming you have the foundation for healthy eating.
|
