Sprouts the Miracle Food

Not all of us can be gardeners. But we all eat. Fact is, if you don’t grow your own, someone has to do it for you. Not a bad concept, but in reality, we’re on the losing end. A trip to the supermarket proves it. The lettuce is lifeless; the spinach is wilting and dark around the edges. You don’t dare to eat the fruit for fear of fumigants, fertilizers, pesticides and the like. As a nation, we’re eating less and less of the healthiest foods on the planet?—?fresh fruits and vegetables. Where are the fruits and vegetables? For the most part, you’ll find them in the canned food aisle. No wonder kids grow up never liking their vegetables! Of course, you could shop at the health food store. But organic produce sometimes costs more than you want to spend?—?if you can find it at all. Unfortunately, we don’t all live in southern California and we don’t all have the time and means to garden.

Here’s where apartment gardening comes in. Every week a new harvest of fresh baby greens matures right in your own kitchen. No tools to buy, no big investment in garden equipment, no bugs or weather to worry about and no dirt. One pound of indoor lettuce takes up just 9 inches of counter-top space and one actual minute of care per day. Just dip and set. Light is no problem?—?normal daylight is all you need. For such little effort, the possibilities are magnificent?—?30 delicious varieties of fresh, nutritious indoor greens and baby vegetables, enough to feed the whole family.

I Regained My Health With This Food

I got over a life-long struggle with allergies and asthma by revamping my diet. The first thing I did was eliminate the chemically tainted produce I was bringing home from the supermarket. How could anyone ever get well with invisible ingredients like DDT, EDB, Aldicarb and Chlordane hidden in their food? But it’s more than that. It’s what they don’t have…nutrition! Mass market agricultural techniques rob the soil of minerals and substitute synthetic fertilizers and hormones. Zinc, for example, is no longer adequately supplied in the U.S. diet. As a consequence, the American male suffers from the world’s highest incidence of prostate cancer and malfunction. Whatever vitamins these vegetables do have is diminished more and more with each day they sit wilting on grocery store shelves. If you had a choice, would you regularly eat food grown 3,000 miles from where you live?

My Apartment Garden Fed HundredsSince I lived in an apartment, I learned to garden indoors. Before long I was dining on crisp Chinese cabbage, luscious crimson clover, hearty sunflower, succulent buckwheat lettuce, spicy red radish, velvety kale, sweet green pea?—?I had so much, I fed all my friends and students. These young greens were so alive and scintillating with color and aroma, you could practically feel their vitamins! Make no mistake about it. That vitality is assimilated by you?—?in the form of live enzymes, vitamins, amino acids, trace minerals, RNA, DNA, oxygen and other secret elements about which only nature knows. You can’t buy that nutrition in a pill!

You’ll Help Our Environment, Too

If you garden indoors, you effectively reduce your dependence on distant sources for food, energy and technology. Don’t think the greenhouse effect is just something that exists in newspapers. Global warming, air pollution, oil spills and acid rain all damage our health as a nation and directly threaten the quality and availability of our food. Drought, flood, heat wave, freeze, increase the price of food as does the rising price of gasoline that is needed to transport it. Our system of over industrialized, long distance, imported, chemically laden, synthetically fertilized and artificially processed foods has got to stop. Either we change it or it will change us. But what can we do about it? Fortunately, you are not completely at the mercy of the giant agri-business industry. You can take steps to become more self-sufficient. Indoor gardening is your answer and it’s easier than you think.

How easy is it? The seeds do all the growing. Your only job is to water them one minute per day (30 seconds in the morning, 30 seconds in the evening). No weeds to weed, no pests to fence out, no bugs, no soil. It takes less time than standing in line at the supermarket! Only 5 tablespoons of seed, costing about a dollar, yields a full pound of sprouted greens. Where else can you find a comparable source of fresh, nutritious food at that price? Whether you live in Metropolis on the 30th floor or in Alaska, whether it’s January or July, you can have fresh food and lots of it year round.

The World’s Most Economical & Nutritious Food

Your grains, beans, and seeds can safely store for years. So next year when the price of spinach rises to $10/lb., don’t worry. You’ll only be paying 80¢?/?lb. for organically grown sunflower greens (more protein than spinach), or $1?/?lb. for jumbo alfalfa greens (more chlorophyll and minerals than parsley). One pound of sprouts provides the combined nutritional advantage of thousands of baby plants. Biologists tell us that in the first 5?–?10 days, young plants achieve their maximum nutrient density. In other words, they are more nutritious than at any other point in their growth. These babies are literally overflowing with rapidly multiplying enzymes, vitamins, proteins and minerals needed for the development of the mature vegetable. B-Vitamins alone increase 300% to 1500% in just 3 to 6 days. Complex starches are broken down reducing cooking time and making beans and grains easier to digest. Enzymes abound!

You don’t need a laboratory to tell how nutritious these foods are. You can taste it in their flavor, smell it in their aroma and see it in their color. When was the last time an iceberg lettuce looked delicious to you? Don’t blame the poor colorless, bland iceberg. It was grown on devitalized, artificially mineralized soil worn out a hundred years ago from massive over-cropping!

All You Need to Make 1 lb of Indoor Lettuce

5 Tbsp seed ($1)

9 inches counter space

1?–?2 minutes watering/day

Normal indoor daylight

5?–?10 days till maturity

A vertical style sprouter

That’s all it takes to have something most people will covet?—?an alternative source of fresh food. In hard times, your sprouter and organic seeds can mean survival. In good times, you’ll thrive in gourmet style with some of the tastiest and most nutritious foods on the planet!

What’s for Dinner?

• Cashew Cottage Cheese

• Sour Dough

• Sprout Bread

• Sprouted

• Wheat Breadstix• Dairyless Ice Cream• Sunflower Sun-Cheese• Zucchini Chips• Manhattan Sprout Chowder• Almond Sunflower Milk• Sprouted Hummus Spread• Sunflower-Power Dressing• Rejuvelac “no alcohol” Wine• Homemade Natural Sodas• Beansprout Marinade• Banana Chip Snacks

From soups to salads, dressings to dips, sprout breads to sprout cookies, crackers, casseroles, croquettes, dairyless cheeses, naturally sweet snacks, raw juices, condiments, non-dairy homemade yoghurts, soft cheeses, ice creams and yes…even pizza. Your diet will overflow with new flavors and textures. There’s a whole new cuisine of exciting tastes waiting for you and it’s all derived from stored grains, beans and vegetable seeds.

Small Investment

For a small investment of $50 to $100, you could purchase all the seeds and tools necessary to cultivate hundreds of pounds of food! You will pay more than that for a lawn mower! You literally get a food factory that keeps on going and going and costs only pennies per pound. You’ll grow baskets of fresh, young salad greens; eat meatless burgers made from soy sprouts, soups from sprouted lentils, sautés from sprouted green peas, snacks from sprouted peanuts, hummus from sprouted garbanzos and all kinds of sprouted breads from wheat and rye. It’s so easy?—?just dip and hang. It’s easy to establish a routine so there is always a fresh batch ready to eat. Some seeds sprout in as little as two days!

It’s not the food in your life, it’s the life in your food.

They say that if you eat fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, you’ll feel fresh and energetic. If you eat wilted, old or canned food, you’ll feel…well, wilted old or canned. Your home-grown, indoor greens are the utmost in freshness. You won’t lose one precious vitamin. These baby green plants trap the energy of the sun and convert it to chlorophyll. Eating fresh, live, chlorophyll-rich foods nourishes every cell of our bodies and increases stamina.

10 Reasons to Start Sprouting

Economics: Seeds can multiply 7?–?15 times their weight. At $10/lb for seed, that yields a pound of fresh sprouted indoor-grown organic greens for an average of one dollar per pound!

Nutrition: Sprouts are baby plants in their prime. At this stage of their growth, they have a greater concentration of proteins, vitamins and minerals, enzymes, RNA, DNA, bio-flavonoids, T-cells, etc., than at any other point in the plant’s life?—?even when compared with the mature vegetable!

Organic: No chemicals, fumigants or questions about certification. You can trust it’s pure because you are the grower!

Availability: From Florida to Alaska; in January or July, enjoy live food anytime, anywhere, even on a boat or when hiking a mountain trail.

Space-time: It’s Easy! Just add water! No soil. No bugs. No green thumb required. No special lights. One pound grows in only 9 inches of counter space and takes one minute of care per day.

Freshness: Because they are picked the same day they are eaten there is no loss of nutrients sitting in crates or on grocery store shelves.

Digestibility: Because sprouts are baby plants, their delicate cell walls release live nourishment easily. Their nutrients exist in elemental form and the abundance of enzymes make them easy to digest even for those with weak digestion.

Versatility: More varieties of salad greens than on your supermarket shelves…including buckwheat lettuce, baby sunflower, French onion, garlic chive, Chinese cabbage, purple turnip, curly kale, daikon radish, crimson clover, golden alfalfa and more. Your salads will never be boring again!

Meals: Make sprout breads from sprouted wheat, rye or barley. Snacks like hummus dip from sprouted garbanzo, cooked vegetable side dishes made from sprouted green peas, Chinese sautés from mung, adzuki and lentils?—?even sprouted wheat pizza!

Ecology: No airplanes or fuel/oil consumed to deliver this food to you. No petroleum-based pesticides or synthetic fertilizers.

Sprouts: The Miracle Food

by Steve MeyerowitzLet the Sproutman show you the joys of indoor organic gardening. Learn how to grow delicious baby greens and mini-vegetables?—?just one week from seed to salad. This guide can make anyone a self sufficient gardener of sprouts that are bursting with concentrated nutrition. Includes the most comprehensive nutrition charts on sprouts in print, plus common questions and answers, Seed Resource section, illustrations, photos & charts.

The Sproutman’s most recent book is “The Organic Food Guide: How to Shop Smarter and Eat Healthier.” His sprouting inventions, such as the “Hemp Sprout Bag” are sold nationwide. You can visit him at www.Sproutman.com.

Vol 30 Issue 3 Page 20