Why Eat Sprouts?
Within six or seven days of sprouting, they are about 10-20 richer in vitamin and minerals than adult vegetables, and five to 10 days after germination they are still rich in enzymes, mineral and vitamins.
As the sprouts grow, the level of healthful nutrients, including vitamin C, thiamine (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2), and aspartic acid, a kind of amino acid, goes up.
 Once they sprout, the protein turns into amino acids and the fat into essential fatty acids, while the minerals such as calcium, phosphorus, and iron also increase.
Broccoli sprouts, for one, are well known to harbor powerful anti-cancer phytochemicals -- far more powerful than any prescription drugs, in fact. Broccoli sprouts are an important nutritional tool for anyone battling cancer, and when combined with other superfoods like chlorella. What the drug companies and conventional medicine like to try and hide is the fact that in some people they can actually reverse cancer and result in the elimination of cancer tumors. More recently these industries have been so worried that they have been busy with a negative publicity campaign, claiming that eating sprouted food can result in salmonella poisoning and death. Considering that every single year in North America alone there are 60,000 prescription drugs related deaths it is highly hypocritical that the pushers of such poisons should highlight just two deaths in the last twenty years from sprouted food.
Home Sprouting
 Most of us in the West depend on fresh produce that is transported across half a continent or increasingly commonly across one or more entire continent (air freight green beans between continent – how environmentally insane is that ?). Though we may garden in the summer, winter stops all but the most dedicated here in northern Europe. Home sprouting can supply delicious fresh food, without the environmental drawbacks of the intensively farmed produce, and at a fraction of the cost. Sprouting at home takes only a few seconds a day and can produce a good part of your daily requirements of the nutrients you need from fresh produce. The hassles are minor, the costs are low, and the freshness is wonderful. If you can supply a jar, some screen or netting, and rinse the sprouts twice a day, you can grow delicious organic sprouts in 4 to 6 days. Better still is to invest a modest one hundred Euros for purpose made water circulating sprouter.
Why Go To the Trouble Of Sprouting At Home ?
1. It costs very little once you have set yourself up to do so.
2. Freshness is always guaranteed.
3. Because YOU care for the food you are growing you always know exactly how good it is.
4. Because growing your own food is a small step towards taking responsibility for your own (& families) health.
5. The ‘ fresh ‘ fruit and vegetables you buy in your local supermarket may have been treated with ethylene gas, or irradiated in order to allow it to be stored for up to eighteen months before reaching you.
Home sprouters come in several types, here are three typical models.
  
We prefer to use the Easy Green Sprouter (Photo above; left) because it has a number of advantages. Firstly it has five separate internal trays so relatively small amounts of five varieties can be efficiently grown, very useful if you are growing for just one or two people. Secondly additional units can be stacked on top thus increasing capacity for no increase in foot print area. Thirdly water can be circulated through all units constantly by means of a low voltage pump reduce the risk of mold growth. Lastly mist generators can be fitted to provide the best possible growing environment.
Process for growing sprouts
This is the basic process for growing your own sprouts. Please refer to the sprouting times schedule table at the bottom of the page for more specific times for the different sprout varieties.
- Soak your seeds for time period that is correct for your chosen sprout type.
- Drain the seeds, rinse and drain again.
- Transfer to sprouting container (distribute evenly across sprouting container).
- Cover the sprouting container (with container lid / cling film etc) to prevent the sprouts from drying out.
- For the specified number of days (see sprouting schedule table) rinse and drain the sprouts every morning and every evening to prevent the formation of mold. Those sprouter unit with a constant fresh water supply and auto drainage do not have this problem.
- After the specified number of days your sprouts are ready for ‘harvesting’. Rinse the sprouts with fresh water and transfer to a bowl. Eat immediately for full nutritional content or store in the fridge for up to a few days (rinse every 24 hours).
Photo below: Easy Green Sprouter with 5 sprouting trays, a circulating water pump & timer. For our family of five we have three of these units with two in operation at any one time and the third being cleaned.
Successful home sprouting requires that you practice some good habits. Clean everything throughly, avoid using chemical cleaners, use 35% Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) diluted to one in ten instead. Work methodically and work it into your daily kitchen routines and the effort required will be small, in return you will get an extremely healthy food.
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There are many reasons why we eat sprouts. They carry plenty of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and enzymes, all necessary for the body to function optimally. In addition to providing the greatest amount of these nutrients, sprouts deliver them in a form that is most easily digested and assimilated. In fact the human body’s physiology is still largely geared around a Paleolithic diet (The Old Stone Age”: 2000000 to 10000 years ago ) because biology evolve more slowly than human abilities. We originally evolved eating a diet of amongst other things, Sprouts. improve the efficiency of digestion. Sprouts are also deliciously fresh and colorful!
Sprouts are very inexpensive even when organically grown, they always fresh because they grow until you chew them, and have the potential to help solve hunger and malnutrition problems in our communities and in developing countries, because they are so rich in nutrients, affordable, and easy to transport before sprouting. Sprouts are precious in winter, when the quality of fresh fruits and vegetables is declining as their price increases. Put simply Sprouts supply the highest amount of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, etc. of any food per unit of calorie, they nourish and strengthen the whole body, including the vital immune system.