Did you know that sprouts can keep you younger and healthier than ever before? By eating a good amount of sprouts, such as bean sprouts and Mung beans, you can help to stay fit and healthy for longer. So what’s behind it?
The Mineral Content of Sprouts
Sprouts have an extremely high mineral content. This is mainly down to the leafing process, as the tiny plants need to rake up a huge amount of minerals in order to allow them to leaf, and so if you eat sprouts just before they leaf, all of those wonderful minerals are still held within the sprouts themselves. The minerals that the sprouts contain are collected by the baby plant from the soil that they grow in.
The minerals that can be found in sprouts include iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus. Potassium is also known as the youth mineral because it is known to help keep skin young, fresh and tight and it also helps you to maintain a good weight. Mung sprouts, blackeye pea sprouts and sunflower and sesame seed sprouts are very high in potassium.
Sprouts are also a great source of trace elements such as zinc, iodine, selenium, silicon and chromium. These trace elements are important in the body for healing of wounds, liver function and for the synthesis of protein, which is the processing of protein in the body. Selenium is important and has been linked to cancer prevention and healing, and it is currently undergoing research and testing.
Other Benefits of Sprouts
As well as having a high mineral content which is essential for the body’s normal functions, sprouts also have many other health benefits and these include cholesterol regulation, diabetes control and antioxidant properties and much more.
What Sprouts Should I Eat?
There are lots of different types of sprouts that you can eat for your health, but some of the best include Adzuki Beans, Alfalfa, Blackeye Pea Sprouts, Chickpeas, Mung Beans, Sango Radish, Snow Pea Shoots, Sunflower Greens and Sunflower Sprouts.
All of these sprouts have a great nutritional value and can seriously boost your health. Wheatgrass, which is a baby wheat plant, is another popular and beneficial plant to get in your diet for the same reasons outlined as other sprouts and shoots. Mung beans and Adzuki beans are particularly good for your health.
Mung beans have a crunchy texture and lovely sweet flavour and are ideal for a healthy twist in salad and stir-fry meals. They contain a high amount of phosphorus and vitamin C and so can give you plenty of energy, especially in the colder months when you feel less energetic and they are also a fantastic natural booster for your immune system to help ward off colds and nasty illnesses. You will also find a range of other brilliant benefits from Mung beans because they contain zinc, potassium, magnesium, thiamine, iron, folic acid and more.
Adzuki beans are a deep reddish brown in colour with a tasty earthy flavour and they contain lots of vitamin C so they’re a great ingredient in your meals. These are a fantastic source of phosphorus, manganese, folate, potassium, magnesium, iron and zinc and they have great cardiovascular benefits by helping to regulate cholesterol levels.
Consumption of Sprouts
It is possible to buy sprouts, but it can be even more rewarding and fun to grow the sprouts yourself at home by buying the seeds. This is also a very cheap way to get sprouts into your diet. Another great way to enjoy sprouts as part of your balanced vegan diet is to add them to homemade juices.
Sprouts are a fantastic way to improve on the variety in your vegan diet, and as you will have read in my other articles and blog posts, a vegan diet does wonders for your health. At Amchara’s Health Retreat, we use various types of sprouts in our meals and in our juices as they have such wonderful nutritional benefit.
Thanks
Karen
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