Chapter Four

Chapter 4

Sprouted Foods

 

Sprouts are super foods containing the maximum vitamin, mineral and enzyme capacities to cleanse, heal and regenerate cells. 

 

Sprouted foods are considered the most nutritious of fresh foods available to us.  These foods are filled with enzymes. No matter where you live, or what economic level you are experiencing, you can enjoy growing and eating these living foods right from the comfort of your own kitchen.

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Anyone can learn to sprout. Sprouts are the most economical source of food with the highest payoff with regard to cellular nutrition. Sprouts require small amounts of space and effort to store, grow, harvest, and manage. And sprouting is just plain fun! It is a time- and cost-effective way to eat. Dedicating a few minutes each morning and evening to care for your personal indoor garden can reward your body and mind with fresh cellular food that will keep you healthy and clear, and keep your cells youthful and strong. 

 

The benefits of sprouts

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Sprouts are fresh, organically grown foods in their natural state. Sprouts are naturally predigested, meaning that starches are already broken down into simple sugars, and proteins are already converted to amino acids. Therefore, these nutrients easily can be absorbed into the body providing quick, satisfying, long-lasting energy. Sprouts are an excellent food for sick people that struggle with degenerative disease. Sprouts can be blended into delicious pâtés and dressings that are not only satisfying and flavorful but a powerhouse of nutrition for weak systems.  Preparing sprouts this way is a wonderful baby food, giving optimum nutrition to tiny bodies that are busy building bones, brain cells, muscles, and vital organs.

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Just one sprouted seed, grain or soaked nut holds the potential for optimal detoxification, nourishment, repair and regeneration of your cells.  Sprouts are the ultimate organic living food, and require the least amount of effort and maintenance, with harvest times between 6 hours up to 1 week.  Sprouts can be grown on your kitchen counter, and need no expensive equipment.

 

Eating sprouts promotes deep cellular healing and emotional stability, assisting the body to use less energy for digestion. Stress levels decrease, so more energy can be diverted to provide vitality to the organs. With little or no stress, you might discover that you accomplish more in a shorter period of time. You may find that your body recovers more rapidly from the pressures of life, from physical work and exercise, and from sickness. Your body might begin to require less sleep, or you might find that you are relaxing better and finally getting adequate sleep. Eating living foods sends a message to your body that it can trust that you are going to take care of it. Remarkably, if your body trusts you, it can become your most valuable partner to achieve the goals you have for it. Conversely, if your body does not trust you, you will find it difficult to change anything with regard to your health. 

 

Deciding to take the journey

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In the beginning, your body needs consistency as you cleanse and reverse bad dietary habits. You must create a new brain pattern that ripples out to the nervous system and fires a new message to cells, which will cause new results. This consistency builds trust within your body--it can depend on you to feed, nurture and keep it safe. Your body will begin to understand that you will provide it with healthy alternatives as you make health your first priority. Soon, your body will step up to the plate; it will go to bat for you in fighting a degenerative disease, give you energy to persevere through a hard project, or shed excess weight. 

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As you begin this new lifestyle journey, be patient and give your taste buds time to embrace new flavors. If you are used to eating man-made sweets, breads, cookies, soda pop, and junk foods, your taste buds are probably clogged and lazy. Give your body the latitude to adjust to these new foods as you integrate them into your daily diet a little at a time. We love to eat, so experiment to suit your taste. Feel free to adjust the flavors to fit your unique palate. Try the recipes at the end of chapters for ideas about dressings and sauces that make every dish complete. You may want to over-season everything at first. But over time, you may cut out the salt or artificial flavor enhancers as your taste buds settle down. As a rule, try tasting the foods before salting them. 

 

Enjoy your meals

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In the beginning, some people eat 2-3 plates of greens, with raw veggies and sprouted foods at every meal. No problem! Let your body have the amounts of food that it needs. Everything will balance out in time. Don’t worry about calorie content. Again, listen to your body and give it what it wants. When I lost 85 pounds in four months, I was eating more food than I ever had in my life! In fact, eating this way in abundant quantities fed my body so well that my cells finally let go of the toxins that had been stored up in the adipose tissue. The result for me was permanent weight loss. 

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Remember, sprouts are living foods that are rich with enzymes. As they break up blockages and attack impactions, you may experience a little gas and bloating. This is normal, and, to quote a pun, “this too shall pass!”  As the enzymes break up the impactions, previous improper food combining like fruits and vegetables eaten together, or starches and proteins eaten together, naturally create fermentation.  As the aggregated material is broken up and moved out of where it had been stored, the trapped toxic gas escapes.  You may feel relief from bloating, as areas of your intestine are cleansed.  Drink lots of water to accelerate the removal of blockages.

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If you discover a white film on your tongue, don’t panic. Your taste buds are cleansing themselves from all the over-processed foods, additives, flavor enhancers and chemicals that you have been eating. You, and others, may find that you have sweeter breath!

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As you are changing over your diet, you may choose to do a short body cleanse that is facilitated by a professional cleansing coach. This process can assist your body in diminishing the reactions that often accompany the change in diet. It is natural for your body to detoxify itself from the harmful substances that you used to eat in the past.  

 

Miraculous transformation

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A sprout is a concentrated food source in which the vitamin and protein content of the seed, legume, or raw nut increases substantially as it soaks and sprouts overnight. The chemistry of the seed changes as it soaks. The phytic acid that occurs naturally in the seed to inhibit bug invasion, dissolves during soaking and the germination process begins. Interestingly, many people, who are allergic to almonds, wheat, and other seeds, discover that soaking and sprouting seeds, nuts and grains, diminishes or eliminates allergic reactions. (If you have a severe allergy, work with your health care provider, if you wish to experiment with this idea.) 

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Once the germination process has started and the biochemistry of the seed, nut or grain changes, it is no longer a grain, it is a vegetable. It becomes a plant, not a starch. When we use the grain, nut or seed in its dry form, and grind it to flour for use without soaking it, it becomes acidic. Excess acid in the body, we know creates an environment ripe for disease. On the other hand, alkaline foods, such as soaked nuts and sprouts, balance the body’s pH level which forms a healthy environment that promotes health and rejuvenation. 

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Remember, any food worth eating that tends to increase your health will first cleanse out toxins and acid. The body cannot build upon disease. Healthy foods such as sprouts help the body to first remove disease and acidity and rid itself of the excess, and then those same healthy foods will balance the pH level to alkalinity. A balance of alkalinity in the body rebuilds cellular function and points the body toward permanent optimum health. 

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Don’t forget to drink a gallon of steam-distilled water everyday as a solvent to pull out impurities from the tissues and cells, and to re-hydrate impactions. Once re-hydrated, those impactions can be more easily released.  Since water is also needed to balance the chemical and electrical reactions in the body, a gallon of pure water everyday is a must whether you are eating living foods or not. Keeping toxins diluted during times of cleansing makes the kidneys’ job easier, and less will be absorbed into your bloodstream. (See Chapter 2) 

 

Sprouts and sugar

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Sprouts are great for people who are diabetic, hyperglycemic, or who have challenges with their pancreas or need to keep their blood sugar levels under control. Sprouted foods are considered a slow sugar that supports the body as it comes off fast sugar cycles and high insulin levels. Most weight problems are caused by excessive sugar consumption, including fast sugars such as breads, pasta, milk products, cheese, eggs and red meats, as well as hard sugars. Sugars are addictive. 

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When sprouted foods are introduced to the diet, their antioxidants go right to work. They scavenge for free radicals and repair the damage that excessive consumption of fast foods has caused over the years. Your body is addicted to the level of sugar to which you have indulged. 

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The good news is that sprouts are rich in starches that are converted by the body into simple sugars, which require very little digestive breakdown, and diminish added stress on these organs. The plant starch from sprouted foods can cause less stress on the gastrointestinal tract and pancreas as opposed to the man-made starchy foods made of flour, which accumulate in the digestive tract as impactions and progenerate fast sugar cycles for the pancreas.  

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When glycemic levels are increased with man-made starchy foods from flours, the insulin levels are again catapulted to extreme levels, which keep the adrenal glands in a “fight or flight” state. In this state, excess toxins are then stored by the body, to be used at a later time to get you through the “crisis”.  Toxins or fat, stored in the tissues this way, is difficult to remove, because the body begins to crave the fast sugars.  If it doesn’t get the fast sugars, it begins to cleanse, creating weakness, dizziness, and exhaustion—causing you to want to eat the fast sugar to satisfy the uncomfortable feelings, and so on, and so on.  This is called the fast sugar cycle.  It is like turning around the Titanic.  It takes consistency and time to cleanse the body and to feed the body a balance of live-cellular building foods with sugars that are balanced and assimilable.  

 

Sprouts, enzymes and proteins 

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Sprouts are living foods rich in enzymes. Enzymes are the living force within a substance. The protein molecule is the carrier or vehicle of the enzyme's energy. But the body needs the proper protein to fully utilize all that the enzyme can offer. When you soak and sprout a grain, seed or nut, the fat of it is now used to promote growth.  The protein develops and is increased as the plant grows. 

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Proteins build bones, muscles and organs. All living, raw foods have proteins. These proteins work with the enzymes to produce living nutrients that feed the body at the cellular level. Many people such as athletes successfully obtain substantial levels of protein and nutrition from a living food diet.

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Many people get protein from eating meats. Typically, we cook meats at temperatures in excess of 105° F to destroy any bacterial or parasitical contamination. In the process, enzymes in the meat are killed. Eating excessive cooked meat can cause great wear and tear on the body as it struggles to find sufficient enzymes to digest it, especially if you are not eating a large “greens” salad with it. Sprouts are an excellent alternative protein source. Try adding them to your current meals. By integrating sprouted foods that have built-in, nutrients and enzymes, pure proteins are supplied to the body and nutrients are assimilated with little or nothing wasted.  

 

Working with the body

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As you introduce living foods to your daily diet, you may experience bloating, gas, headaches, weakness, and even uncontrollable cravings. These are some of the same symptoms that addicts experience in drug detoxification. If you are choosing to eat more living foods and are experiencing any of these symptoms, the solution is to be consistent. If you fall off the wagon get back on immediately. Take care of yourself by getting plenty of sleep and drinking lots of water. It is good idea to get colonics during these episodes to release from the body what it can’t release on its own. Quarterly body cleansing—every three months--relieves the body’s reactions to cleansing as it rids itself of built-up poisons. 

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Once you stop eating poisonous, artificial foods that are rich with chemicals, additives, colors and preservatives, you will be shocked at what you have been putting in your body. Once you are freed from the addictive clutches of these chemicals, you will be so amazed at your new, natural sustained energy, consistent clarity of mind, and your freedom from aches and pains. Be patient. Turning around fast sugar cycles can take years. Be consistent. Good habits take time. With a healthy diet and exercise, people who have not been able to previously lose weight now can manage their high blood sugar and cholesterol levels, master their sugar addictions, and drop the pounds.

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Sprouted foods really are perfect food sources.

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