Sprouting
Sprouting Was wondering if sprouting beans and seeds might be a good way to vary my diet over the winter ,when salad stuff is more limited and / or expensive? Before I buy a sprouter kit, I wondered if any of you had personal experience?
Two main concerns are:
* will I get fed up with the general process of tending to / rinsing the beans and hence be left with smelly rotting messes,
and
* my wish to avoid phytoestrogens such as soya beans (I’m ER+) ?
Thanks!
sprouts and phyto-oestrogens etc. IF you buy a sprouter kit, I’m sure you wont have any nasty slimy yeuchy sprout problems if you follow a couple of commonsense practical guidelines: keep the sprouter immaculately clean, using only bicarbonate for cleaning it and use fresh seeds and beans to sprout at an adequate temperature for germination - i.e. comfortably warm for you (without having to don lots of extra sweaters) is just fine for sprouts and don’t leave sprouts in the sprouter after they’ve reached edible condition - pop them in a glass storage container in the fridge.
You’ll be glad to hear that in my experience soya beans are particularly unrewarding and difficult to sprout. Lentils and chickpeas and Aduki beans and black-eyed beans as well as mung beans are good for getting a bulky quantity of sprouts quickly. Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds are also good. Don’t forget to sprout some mustard and cress by the old-fashioned method, cheap, tasty, cheerful and full of brassica goodness.
There are phyto-oestrogens in virtually every living plant. The thing about soya and other beans and peas is that they are a more concentrated source than most plants. Even in soya, the concentration is less than 1/500th of milk and other animal sources, including our own endocrine systems…
"Soya is an excellent source of B vitamins, calcium, iron and zinc and it is rich in essential polyunsaturated fats including the vitally important omega 3 fatty acids. Also it is free of unhealthy cholesterol and lactose that are concentrated in dairy milk.
A report published by The Royal Society in 2002 concluded that phytoestrogens are protective against hormone- related cancer such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer and prostate cancer . This is because phytoestrogens lock on to receptors for animal hormones such as oestrogen in our bodies but they are much weaker(about 1/ 500th to 1/1000th times weaker) than animal oestrogens. Hence they work in the same way as drugs like tamoxifen by stopping the dangerous oestrogen from animal sources such as dairy attaching to oestrogen receptors on cancer cells and stimulating them to grow."
The fact that such minute concentrations can be beneficial should alert us to how dangerous high concentrations of oestrogen from animal sources can be in stimulating oestrogen receptor positive tumours.
So if you don’t want to ingest phyto-oestrogens, throw out the fruit and veg. If they were really a danger to our health, the human race would have died out long ago.
Until the last 60 years, meat and fish were luxury items in most people’s diets, except for the Inuit and other near Arctic people.
Are you old enough to remember the sunday roast being recycled by mum in diminishing quantities through the week via sheperd’s pie, until we were down to spaghetti in tomato sauce or risotto or mostly vegetable curry? supplemented by boiled or fried or scrambled eggs with breakfast on days it wasn’t cornflakes or toast and marmalade and the occassional treat of fishcakes or fish fingers? That was before the days of MacDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken… and all the adulterated, over-processed convenience “foods” arrived.
I am on Arimidex which of course suppresses my own bodies production of oestrogen and also apparently goes some way to suppress bone secondaries. I’m not about to fill my body with other animal sources of oestrogen which will eventually negate the benefit I gain from Arimidex and give the cancer an advantage. I am prepared to ingest minute quantities of plant oestrogens which block oestrogen receptors whilst enjoying a rich and varied mostly fruit, vegetable and grain based diet which also helps me to fight effectively against osteoporosis.
Happy sprouting- May we all thrive on it!
Jenny
Thank you Jenny! Jenny,
That was a very full and useful reply. I found your views on phytoestrogens particularly interesting. I didn’t realise that they were as prevalent as you say. I thought there were just a few really strong ones such as soya, clary sage, etc. that we needed to avoid.
I am now prompted to go a head with ordering a sprouter and so far, think that the Geo 3 tier Sprouter looks suitable and reasonably priced.
For anyone else considering one of these, the best price I found so far was £16.95 inc VAT and free delivery from www.juiceland.co.uk
Alternatively, look at www.ukjuicers.com
They are cheaper for seeds but charging slightly more for the same sprouter (though they offer it with 3 “free” packs of seeds thrown in so not an exact comparison).They say however, they will match anyone else’s offer so I emailed them to see if they will sharpen the price.
I’ve also made a mental note to buy traditional salad seeds in April, which I will plant out in containers by my back door! Never been that sure about those chlorine-washed salad bags they sell in the supermarket. Soon I will hardly need to go out shopping!
Thanks again
Holey.
I also would like to say thank Jenny for your post - its any area where I have been very vague and your reply was most interesting