Prana In Your Food: The Importance of Sprouting

Prana-rich food is stimulating for the mind and the body, foods that are rich in prana are fresh and full of life, when we sprout our seeds this gives them more life than a dry seed or canned food. Canned food is preserved rather than fresh and therefore very low in prana and life force. The dry seed has the prana life force sleeping, waiting to be activated and woken up by moisture. 

Soaking and sprouting are one of the stages of digestion. Sort of like the pre-wash cycle in the washing machine, it’s like pre-digestion although it happens outside of your body. The first stage of digestion in the body is chewing your food to an even consistency to help support better assimilation of the food. Sprouting also supports better assimilation of food as it ensures the phytic acid is completely dissolved and washed off. Phytic acid is a compound found on all nuts/seeds, grains, legumes, and even tubors like beets, potatoes, carrots, turnips, radishes, etc… It is important to remove this phytic acid by soaking and sprouting since the acid can cause mild digestive issues in most individuals and in some cases in more sensitive individuals more intense gas and indigestion, leading to malabsorption of other nutrients. In Ayurveda, we refer to the digestive strength as agni, in an individual with low or variable agni the body needs as much help as possible to aid in digesting these food categories. 

What you will need: 

• 1 quart or ½ gallon mason jar with either a “sprouting lid” or the following:
• 1 large bowl
• 1 sifter that can easily sit inside and rest on the rim of the large bowl
• Muslin cloth or clean kitchen towel 

Step 1: Start with a small number of seeds You do not need to sprout your tubors but simply soak and scrub before cooking/consumption. ¼ cup is a good place to start depending on your recipe.

Step 2: Put the seeds in the jar and fill them with filtered or well water. Cover your jar with the cloth and change out the water every day depending on the temperature of the room, If the temp is consistently over 75 degrees change 2x/day.

Step 3: After the appropriate amount of soaking time for the seed you chose to soak (see chart below) 

Strain out the liquid through the sifter over your bowl or sink. If you chose to use a “sprouting top” simply pour out the liquid by tipping the jar upside down over a bowl or sink.

Step 4:  Let the seeds sit in the jar for the appropriate sprouting time (also see chart below)

• No sprout: this means that this seed is very difficult to purchase truly raw, If it was raw it would sprout.