Having established that sprouts are real, fresh, living, and vital food, a spontaneous question arises: can any seed be sprouted for food consumption? Are all seeds the same?
Seeds are biologically identical to each other in the sense that they all contain the properties of the adult plant, but not all seeds can be used to produce sprouts as they are not edible.
Some seeds are certainly to be excluded for sprout self-production, more precisely those of:
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Potatoes
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Tomatoes
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Eggplants
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Peppers
and the reason is that, being nightshades, they contain solanine, a substance found mainly in the skin and seeds that serves as a defense against insects and fungi but can be toxic to humans if consumed in excessive amounts. However, as ripening progresses, the solanine decreases, and for this reason, it is recommended to consume nightshades in the summer, preferably cooked, dried, or treated with salt.
The seed, in order to germinate, must be alive: so no to the use of treated, refined, roasted, or dried seeds (like legumes), they cannot germinate due to lack of life!!
The natural and live seeds that can germinate can then be divided into four types:
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Legumes (peas, azuki)
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Cereals (wheat, rye, barley)
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Vegetables (broccoli, watercress, arugula)
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Oily seeds (sunflower)
Once you have chosen the type of sprout to produce, cultivation is very easy and quick. There will be an initial soaking phase followed by washing and draining of the seeds to be done twice a day until the desired sprout is obtained. Special care is required for the so-called mucilaginous seeds (in our assortment, this applies to arugula and watercress): to avoid the formation of the characteristic gray-blue gel that surrounds them once placed in water, we recommend using hydroponic cultivation with EVA H.
