…And they’re delicious!
Let Food Be Thy Medicine and Medicine Thy Food.
~ Hippocrates, Father of Modern Medicine
Oops, I goofed. I must have too many things on my mind. I’ll blame it on all the juicing I’m doing for my new book: “Sproutman’s 7 Day Just Juice Diet.” (More on that next time.)
Here’s how the problem started. Broccoli sprouts as many of you know are one of the healthiest foods on the planet. They are a comprehensively researched alternative anti-cancer treatment. But the price of good certified organic broccoli seed for sprouting is one of the most expensive of all sprouting seeds and it has been consistently climbing over the last year.
Good news, I got lucky and found a cache of broccoli seeds at a lower price that I had already tested and approved. So I ordered it. The problem is I accidentally ordered it twice. Oops! So now I have double the volume of a very expensive seed. That ties up cash that I want to spend on a new and very healthy organic sunflower that I just found. (It’s been a tough year for good quality sunflower.) But cash is just one issue. Refrigeration is the other. I maintain all of my seeds under refrigeration and I only have so much cold storage space.
But my problem is your good fortune! (I’ll tell you how in a moment.)
First, for those of you interested in the process of how this food stops cancer, I have a full article explaining it in the May issue of The Hippocrates Health Magazine. This is the magazine put out by the world famous Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach Florida. In short, every cell has a standard process of growing and duplicating itself. Broccoli sprouts produce an enzyme in our digestive tract that interrupts the cancer’s growth cycle. They are called phase II enzymes—the phase between synthesis and mitosis. The most famous of this group of enzymes is called sulforaphane.
I am personally eating organic broccoli sprouts every day now. Broccoli sprouts are 50 to 100 times more nutrient dense then the mature broccoli vegetable, even if organically grown. Researchers have tested the various stages and determined that it achieves its greatest concentration at 5 to 7 days of growth. This maximizes its anti-cancer nutrients. Broccoli is part of a larger family called Brassica. This includes radish, cabbage, kale, collards, raab, bok choi, kohlrabi, etc. For a while there was a debate questioning if broccoli is better than kale, or is kale better than cabbage, or is cabbage better than radish, etc.
There was even an effort to single out one particular variety of broccoli as the best and a corporation attempted to patent it. Do you think the U.S. government would really allow them to patent a common vegetable? Well, they did! In fact, they also patented the process of sprouting! It’s a long story but in the end, the patent was completely revoked.
Truth is, all the Brassicas will generate sulforaphane, but the vast majority of cancer research has been done on broccoli sprouts. And although there are different varietals of broccoli, in terms of sulforaphane, those variables are small enough to change from farm to farm and season to season. If someone tells you they’ve got the best broccoli for cancer, you can bet it’s just corporate marketing.
If you really want to protect yourself from cancer, eat it every day. (You’re having a salad everyday anyway, right?) It’s not a question of which variety, but a matter of consistency in the diet. As long as you are eating broccoli sprouts or any of its sister Brassicas daily, then you are getting enough sulforaphane to protect yourself against cancer. If you know someone who has cancer, you need to get them sprouting broccoli today.
For prevention purposes simply eating broccoli sprouts in your daily salads is all you need, but if you are fighting an existing cancer, you also want to blend them into green smoothies, although very slowly so that you don’t destroy and oxidize it’s valuable enzymes. You can also juice broccoli sprouts. Use a slow turning juicer machine such as the SlowStar, SoloStar or the GreenStar. But because broccoli has such a spicy flavor, you need to cut it with other juices such as carrot, apple, celery, cucumber, or tomato. Use it as part of a mixed vegetable juice.
The blender and the juicer both concentrate an already concentrated food so you can achieve therapeutic dosage. Again, you cannot achieve this with the mature vegetable even if organically grown. The anti-cancer compounds predominate in the seedling stage.
By the way, some of you have asked, is there a broccoli pill? Yes! It’s pretty convenient, but it’s not good enough to treat cancer. It is only useful for prevention and even still is not as good as eating it fresh.
Setting Up Your Growing System
Broccoli is best grown in a Freshlife sprouter either the hand watering model 1000 (very economical) or the automatic Freshlife 3000 (very convenient). Some of you may already own the previous Freshlife 2000 model. All the Freshlife models work great. And even though the sprout bag is not a “vertical” style sprouter, it can also grow broccoli sprouts if you that is all you have. But the Freshlife would be a wise investment in your health and with its 2 models, you can surely find one to fit your budget.
Now comes the most important part—the seed. Broccoli is a temperamental seed. It is hard to get it germinating in the same percentage as for example, alfalfa. Common broccoli is about 80% germination which means 20% of them are not growing. Thus when cleaning the grown sprouts, you are also washing away the 20% of the sprouts that did not grow. (Watch the video of me cleaning the sprouts to get some idea of the best technique to use.) Sure, it’s a little bit of work to grow sprouts but the payoff is your health and your healing. Spending time in your kitchen is one of the best things you can do for your health. You can’t put that into a pill.
I want you to start including broccoli sprouts into your daily diet just like I do. Even when traveling, I bring a zip bag of sprouts with me. Sure, you can simply buy broccoli sprouts at the market and not grow them, but I recommend you get personally involved if you’re trying to beat cancer. The dosage for that requires higher volumes, the highest quality, and a continuous supply. If your life or the life of a loved one is at stake, you must choose the best.
Share it with your friends. I want everybody to start sprouting. Buy a few pounds and store them. Put the seeds in a heavy duty freezer bag and press out all of the air before you seal it shut. Put it in the refrigerator or freezer. If you don’t have room there, store them in a glass jar in a cool dry space. Cold temperatures provide the best longevity. If you can’t wait for the article coming out in May, and want the research, then get my book Sprouts The Miracle Food. I reference my research there in the chapter explaining the characteristics of all the different sprouting seeds. It will also give you the different timings, storage descriptions, and cultivation methods. There are about 30 seeds discussed.
Sproutman SproutLab 