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Sprouts provide Vitamin C all year, regardless of climate, without leaving your house. Since they're often eaten raw, there's very little loss. They're great for your chickens as well. Mung bean sprouts are a necessity in Egg Foo Young.; alfalfa sprouts are great in sandwiches and provide Vitamin C in omelettes and scrambled eggs.
Sprouts can prevent scurvy and keep you alive. Sprouts are a primary survivalist item.
Sprouts provide Vitamin C all year, regardless of climate, without leaving your house. Since they're often eaten raw, there's very little loss. They're great for your chickens as well. Mung bean sprouts are a necessity in Egg Foo Young.; alfalfa sprouts are great in sandwiches and provide Vitamin C in omelettes and scrambled eggs.
Sprouts can prevent scurvy and keep you alive. Sprouts are a primary survivalist item.
Sprouts provide Vitamin C all year, regardless of climate, without leaving your house. Since they're often eaten raw, there's very little loss. They're great for your chickens as well. Mung bean sprouts are a necessity in Egg Foo Young.; alfalfa sprouts are great in sandwiches and provide Vitamin C in omelettes and scrambled eggs.
Sprouts can prevent scurvy and keep you alive. Sprouts are a primary survivalist item.
Your site is very misleading. Try this one https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts...roducts/2302/2 Your site states that alfalfa sprouts (without stating the amount) gives you 8 mg of Vit C, but the other site says 1 whole cup of sprouts is only 2.7mg, representing a mere 5% of the RDA-- you'd have to eat 20 cups of sprout a day to get all your vit C. (and almost no other vits, minerals, carbs or protein. May as well eat paper.). Sprouts provide only moisture /texture for your food.
OTOH- one potato gives you 48% of your RDA for C and quite a bit of several other vits & mins, not to mention its good energy content. Potatoes are easily the single best plant source of nutrition- rivaled only by meat as single best nutrition source. https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts...roducts/2770/2
With a meat & potato diet, we'd do pretty well, but we still need bread or pasta (grain) to get enough Thiamine.
As I wrote earlier, sprouting seeds is inefficient: low germination rate and a lot wasted to mold. Just eat the seeds. Besides- if you waste all your seeds on sprouting, where will you get more seeds for next year?
Your site is very misleading. Try this one https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts...roducts/2302/2 Your site states that alfalfa sprouts (without stating the amount) gives you 8 mg of Vit C, but the other site says 1 whole cup of sprouts is only 2.7mg, representing a mere 5% of the RDA-- you'd have to eat 20 cups of sprout a day to get all your vit C. (and almost no other vits, minerals, carbs or protein. May as well eat paper.). Sprouts provide only moisture /texture for your food.
OTOH- one potato gives you 48% of your RDA for C and quite a bit of several other vits & mins, not to mention its good energy content. Potatoes are easily the single best plant source of nutrition- rivaled only by meat as single best nutrition source. https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts...roducts/2770/2
With a meat & potato diet, we'd do pretty well, but we still need bread or pasta (grain) to get enough Thiamine.
As I wrote earlier, sprouting seeds is inefficient: low germination rate and a lot wasted to mold. Just eat the seeds. Besides- if you waste all your seeds on sprouting, where will you get more seeds for next year?
Before the Irish Potato Famine, the mainstay of the Irish diet was the potato, accompanied by llarge quantities of milk. Since the potatoes were half-raw, there was adequate Vitamin C in them. Properly cooked potatoes have virtually no Vitamin C since heat destroys it.
The OP expressed an interest in using sprouts, but he made no mention of making them a part of his primary diet. The potato can be part of the diet as well, but this thread is about sprouts.
Note that the Self Nutrition site specifically states that 48% of the RDA for Vit C is supplied by 1 large BAKED potato. I mention it just for comparison to spouts-- pretty much worthless for nutrition and they require some work and some loss in producing them. JUST EAT THE SEEDS-- no loss to mold or non-germination-- Better yet, sow the seeds & harvest the grain. Mill it and bake it as bread. Save some of the seeds and repeat yearly ad infinitum. Seeds store well in cold weather, while growing sprouts over the winter requires heat & space....But it's your survival plan. Live it any way you like.
In a survival situation, I don't think its very practical. I could easily be wrong too, but if clean water is at a premium, you aren't going to want to waste it on sprouting. Also, if you use a bunch of seeds for broccoli sprouts, then you are foregoing a mature broccoli plant's nutrition in exchange for the comparatively little amount of overall nutrition you will get from sprouting the broccoli seeds. To me, that is sort of like eating a good laying hen instead of collecting and feasting on her eggs.
I think overall, the sprouts will prove to be a luxury. That said, we really aren't in 'survival mode' for the most part, so there is nothing wrong with a prepper getting into sprouting. I currently enjoy Ezekiel Bread found in the frozen food section of most supermarkets. It has to be frozen because it is made from sprouted grain. I'm sure many preppers could benefit from baking with sprouts, but how many would want to waste valuable real estate in any freezers they might have to keep baked goods in? You could probably bake enough to eat that day.
Maybe freezing isn't so much of an issue for people that live in places where you can get snow overnight in the middle of summer, like Wyoming as an example. Maybe sprouting is very practical for places with severely limited growing seasons, like Alaska.
Well, that's my two cents. I really have no definitive answer regarding sprouting. I guess if you have all your other bases covered, its something worth exploring. Its definitely a faster way to get something green in your belly than waiting for the grown plant to mature.
I'm revisiting my previous post. I've learned a few things since I first posted here, and although sprouts could still prove to be a luxury - they could also prove to be invaluable in the maintenance of your overall health.
They need relatively little light and space. You can sprout, indoors or out, in complete darkness. One drawback is the amount of clean fresh water they will require twice daily.
I just started sprouting for the health benefits, and no, Im not talking about Vitamins.
What food bank isn't going to store up beans or seeds? If someone is going to try to store up food, they will certainly include dry goods.
Sprouting makes beans and seeds like gardening on steroids.
Lentils are rich in prebiotics. Prebiotics feed your internal friendly flora, that feed you back with beneficial compounds like propionate that relaxes your stomach and slows the rate in which sugars are absorbed into your system. They are in and of themselves one of the most nutrient rich legumes, and when sprouted, their antioxidant power doubles. When it comes to chickpeas, the antioxidant effects quintuple.
Why would anyone put lentils in their soup pot, if they can add sprouted lentils instead?
Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables can potentially prevent DNA damage and metastatic cancer spread, activate defenses against pathogens and pollutants, help prevent lymphoma, boost your liver detox enzymes, target breast cancer stem cells and reduce the risk of prostate cancer. The component believed to be responsible is sulforaphane, which is formed almost exclusively in cruciferous vegetables.
NOTE: Save your money. Studies have shown little benefit from the cruciferous vegetable supplements.
When raw broccoli and other cruciferous veggies are chopped and chewed a chemical flare up happens causing sulforaphane formation. There is little reaction from cooked cruciferous veggies. You don't have to eat the veggies raw. The trick is to chop them, then wait 40 minutes for the chemical reaction to complete, then you can cook the veggies all you want.
Beyond being an anticancer agent, sulforaphane also can protect your brain, and your eyesight, reduce nasal allergy inflammation, manage type II diabetes, and help treat autism. Sulforaphane content peaks at 48 hours when sprouting broccoli.
There's a lot more, but yeah. If someone doesn't have to be on the move in their survival situation, sprouting could very well become an intregal part of their 'survival medicine chest.'
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food - Hippocrates.
So far nobody has listed any sources for seeds to sprout. I like alfalfa sprouts on my sandwiches - forget worrying about SHTF situations, I want sprouts to eat now. Plus generally there's a learning curve to these sorts of things, better to learn when things aren't crazy so if/when things do get crazy, the knowledge of the best way to grow sprouts is already there.
But, where to get the seeds? All the sources I've found so far have been pretty pricey.
Potatoes are a good choice, but grow 2 or 3 varieties to reduce the chance of losing your crop to blight. Remember the Irish Potato Famine?
Pumpkin and winter squash have a great shelf life in a root cellar, root vegetables like carrots, turnips, parsnips and onions keep well and dehydrate well for longer term storage. For greens, hard to beat cabbage for nutrients, storage and value of production to space ratio.
Don't forget to plant some herbs. Most grow like weeds, and add flavor to a bland diet.
They also have more vitamins and minerals than sprouts, even if dried, and thousands of other compounds to help maintain good health, as well as compounds for treating injuries and illnesses.
Aside from those benefits for which humans have used them for thousands of years, yeah, elevating flavor profiles. If I recall correctly, you were a classically trained chef in a former life? I'm learning, and using copious amounts of them.
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For long term production that doesn't require cultivation and reproduce naturally, I'd go with native plants that grow wild. Stinging Nettles, Burdock, Fiddleheads, Cattails, Biscuit root, just find out what's in your area, how to identify it and how to prepare it.
Berries grow just about everywhere in all kinds of environments. Know what grows in your area, and which are safe since there are a lot of poisonous ones.
Some are great eating, but have toxic pits like chokecherry. Thornapples are fine on the bush, deadly after they fall to the ground. Rosehips are a super source of vitamin C, but remove the hooked seeds or you could have serious gastric issues.
Same for wild nuts. Acorns are great food, but must be ground up and leached in cold water to remove the excess tannic acid.
Being able to collect wild plants, and process them for consumption and storage reduces the amount of food you have to grow.
For seed lovers, look into the wild millets. They produce thousands of tiny seeds that can make a pretty good flour, or I guess you could sprout them, I've never tried and never researched it since sprouts of any kind are not on my radar.
I don't know the calorie count, but radishes have vary little food value, like bamboo, you can eat it, but hardly worth the effort.
Chickens are great for both eggs and meat, so are ducks, geese and turkeys, they'll eat scraps from your garden. Don't overlook rabbits. A few does and a couple bucks can produce a LOT of meat all year round, and only need grass, hay, water and a little salt. Plus you get very warm furs for cold weather clothing. They also love garden scraps, and you can raise a lot of rabbits in very little space for their hutches.
It's fun to look at this stuff for SHTF, but you can go a long way to supplementing your diet with really good natural food now. I use heritage seeds for my garden so I only have to buy seeds once. Hybrid seeds are good for high production, but don't reproduce naturally.
Before the Irish Potato Famine, the mainstay of the Irish diet was the potato, accompanied by llarge quantities of milk. Since the potatoes were half-raw, there was adequate Vitamin C in them. Properly cooked potatoes have virtually no Vitamin C since heat destroys it.
The OP expressed an interest in using sprouts, but he made no mention of making them a part of his primary diet. The potato can be part of the diet as well, but this thread is about sprouts.
Only because it was forced on them. There was plenty of food grown in Ireland, even during the blight, but it was illegal for the Irish to have it. Everything else was taken to feed the English army. And there was fish. It was illegal for the Irish to own much of anything. They couldn't even own a fishing pole or net, much less a boat.
It's another scenario to consider. Even if you have access to natural resources like water and fish, will you be prevented from using them? Will you be forced to raise sprouts and other foods to feed others?
This thread is a blessing. We debated about having chickens due to a lack of greens all year but no more. These Sophisticated Hydrophonic setups should work great. Combined with somehow getting leftover organic vegetables every once in a while, might suffice
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Agree with all the rest of your post, too.
