Supporting Your Digestive Health Through Soaked and Sprouted Foods

Nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, oh my!

We know by now that nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes can be solid additions to your way of eating.

They each have a blend of macro and micronutrients that will support your body. The downside to nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes – if they are not properly prepared, your body will find it very challenging to absorb the nutrients they provide and digest them. And you’ll probably notice it via symptoms like gas, cramping, bloating, etc.

So, let’s throw it back to our ancestors for a quick second. Research has shown our ancestors used to consume foods like nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes. While where they lived determined their diet and what they had access to, these foods were not foreign to them. Here’s the really interesting part – they didn’t need scientists or nutritionists around to tell them they needed to properly prepare those particular foods before consuming them. Thanks to their innate intelligence, they just knew they needed to soak and/or sprout these foods so they could reap the benefits from them. Pretty cool, huh?

Now, let’s jump back to the present. Even though our ancestors properly prepared these harder-to-digest foods, many people in this day and age don’t know to do that. It’s just not widely known, which is so unfortunate.

So this begs the question, why would I want to take the time to soak or sprout my nuts, seeds, grains, and beans?

This largely boils down to is the subject of enzymes. If you are a part of the Graceful Scoop Newsletter (the nifty name for my newsletter), you’ve heard me mention enzymes before. So let’s take just a moment to explore what these guys are and why they are important because they play a crucial role in what we’re discussing.

The definition of an enzyme is a substance that is produced by a living organism that helps to bring about a specific biochemical reaction. There are many enzymes with many different functions, but in the context of our digestion, enzymes are responsible and necessary for breaking down all the food we eat into tiny, microscopic pieces that can then be absorbed through our intestinal lining and into our bodies at a cellular level.

Let’s dive into an example. There are 2 parts to getting our food once we’ve taken a bite of, let’s say, an apple –

The first is digestion – which is the process of breaking down our food into pieces tiny enough that they can be used by our body.

The second is absorption – which is the transportation of those nutrients through our intestinal wall and into our bodies at a cellular level.

So, even if you’re eating super nutrient-dense foods, that first process of digestion needs to fully take place so that you can absorb your food. And enzymes are like the little construction workers inside your digestive tract that get in there and break things down.

We can produce these enzymes ourselves or we can get them from the food we eat. The guys our bodies produce are called digestive enzymes and those that we get externally through food are called food enzymes.

Same enzymes, different sources.

It’s best to get as many as we can through our food since we don’t have a limitless supply of our own, as evidenced by the fact that our enzyme production tends to decrease with age. And also, if we get them through our food, that allows our body’s energy to be directed toward other needed functions (like rebuilding and replacing worn-out, damaged cells and tissues, etc). Taking them in from our food creates less of a burden on the body.

Additionally, as you can probably deduce, if you are lacking sufficient enzymes, you aren’t able to properly break down all of your food. This can lead to issues like weight gain, digestive stress, inflammation, and fatigue. So yeahhhh, enzymes are a crucial factor for our overall health.

Let’s envision a regular nut, seed, grain, or legume. As you know, all of these things have a very long shelf life. You can put this on your coffee table and come back a few years later and it’s going to be more or less the same. The oils in it won’t be so tasty, but overall, it’s going to look the same. There’s not much enzymatic activity in there breaking things down, or else they would all go bad much faster.

That’s because these things are naturally preserved by enzyme inhibitors. And in nature, they exist to preserve nuts, seeds, grains, and beans until the right conditions exist for them to grow into a parent plant and produce their little seed babies. These enzyme inhibitors are nature’s way of ensuring the survival of these plant species.

Great news for the plant, not great news for our digestion…unless we soak or sprout them. This helps to reduce and neutralize those enzyme inhibitors.

Just like it sounds, enzyme inhibitors act to inhibit enzymes, resulting in the fact they can also inhibit your body’s ability to easily break that food down and use it. These enzyme inhibitors also put stress on the pancreas, which is a very important organ that’s shaped like a big tadpole. The pancreas has the responsibility of producing the enzymes we need to break down our food, and also the hormones that we need to regulate our blood sugar.

These enzyme inhibitors are one factor in the relatively common issue of grain intolerance, and why many people feel better when they stop eating grains. But if they were to soak or sprout them, they might find that their grain-associated symptoms alleviate.

So how does this work?

The primary ingredients that trigger that “right” condition to allow the seed to shed those enzyme inhibitors and start sprouting are –

moisture

warmth

time

slight acidity

You can drop a grain of brown rice on the sidewalk and it’ll theoretically sit there for years. But you drop it two feet away in moist grass and it’ll start to germinate.

THAT’S what we’re going for. This can be accomplished in two ways – soaking and sprouting.

Soaking

Soaking your nuts and seeds in warm filtered water (ideally warm, salty water) will help to neutralize the enzyme inhibitors as well as encourage the production of beneficial enzymes. These enzymes, in turn, increase the number of nutrients available, especially the B vitamins.

The basic method is the same with different kinds of nuts and seeds:

Dissolve salt in water (about half a tablespoon per two cups of water)*
Pour water over the nuts or seeds using enough water to cover them.
Leave in a warm place, generally overnight.
Drain the water and rinse to prepare for dehydration in the oven or dehydrator. If dehydrating in an oven, set it to 150 degrees for approximately 10 hours.

Make sure they are all the way dry! If not, they could mold and won’t have that crispy texture. I’ve found that the longer I soak grains, the longer it takes to dehydrate them.

*When soaking grains and some beans, use an acidic substance rather than salt, such as lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, or whey (about one tablespoon per cup of water). For most legumes, soak in water and a pinch of baking soda.

*Grains and legumes can be soaked for 24 hours, changing the soaking water after 12 hours to avoid unwanted growth of bacteria.

Now, there are some variations in the method of soaking, depending on what it is you are trying to soak. And an additional factor that plays a part in this is something called phytic acid.

Phytic acid is present in nuts, seeds, grains, and beans but it is most concentrated in grains and beans. Phytic acid acts as a preservative to prevent premature germination and also to store the nutrients for plant growth. But what it also does is binds with calcium, magnesium, copper, iron, and especially zinc in the intestinal tract and block their absorption, which can result in mineral deficiencies.

As a side note, zinc is one of the most important minerals for fertility in both women and men, so if any of you are trying to start or grow a family, you want to make sure you are soaking and sprouting so that you’re not depleting yourself of zinc.

Phytic acid also reduces the digestibility of protein. All of these things can lead to nutritional deficiencies and subsequent health issues.

Sprouting

It’s said that credit for discovering the value of sprouted seeds traditionally goes back to the Chinese, who learned to do this many centuries ago. They carried mung beans on their ocean-going ships, which they then sprouted and ate throughout their voyages to prevent scurvy. They understood that an important factor was produced during the sprouting process – which turns out to be Vitamin C. Vitamin C isn’t the only thing we get from sprouting.

Numerous enzymes that aid digestion is created, as well as a variety of vitamins, including such B vitamins as B2, B5, and B6. Beta-carotene and Vitamin E also increase. According to herbalist and author Isabell Shipard, sprouts can yield vitamin contents up to 30 times higher than those of their mature plant counterparts.

And, as we know, we are helping to further neutralize enzyme inhibitors as well as further reduce that phytic acid.

We’re also increasing the bioavailability of minerals and proteins (meaning our body can utilize them more completely). When seeds, grains, nuts, or beans begin to sprout, minerals such as calcium and magnesium begin binding to proteins, making both the minerals and protein more available to your body. When we sprout grains specifically, we are changing the composition of the grain’s starch molecules, converting them into vegetable sugars. As a result, we are consuming less starch when we eat grains that have sprouted.

The basic method is the same with different kinds of grains, beans, nuts, and seeds:

You’ll need a mason jar as well as a permeable lid, such as a piece of cheesecloth, a screen insert, or a sprouting lid (available online and in health food stores).

Fill a mason jar one-third full with any grain or seed. Fill the remainder of the jar with filtered water, add ½ teaspoon sea salt, and screw on the sprouting lid.
Allow the seeds to soak overnight, then pour off the water.
Rinse the seeds well – you can do this without removing the top.
Invert the jar and let it sit at an angle so it can drain and air can circulate. The seeds should be rinsed every few hours or a least twice per day. Depending on what you’re sprouting, the sprouts will be ready in one to four days, when their tails have reached ¼ inch. Keep out of direct sunlight to prevent the sprouts from leafing.
Rinse well, shake out excess moisture and replace the sprouting lid with the normal mason jar lid. Store the sprouts in the refrigerator for 5 days.

Recap – Benefits of Soaking and/or Sprouting Nuts, Seeds, Grains, and Legumes

aids digestion
increases chance of absorbing nutrients
reduces the chance of minerals being robbed by enzyme inhibitors, such as phytase or phytic acid
reduces PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acids) amount

As you can see, the benefits of soaking and sprouting far outweigh the extra prep time, which isn’t much by the way!

To ease you into soaking and sprouting, I’ve created a freebie for you! In my guide/cheat sheet, you’ll find soaking and sprouting instructions for nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains, as well as a soaking + sprouting time chart. Save it or print it out and slap it on your fridge underneath one of your nifty magnets for easy reference.

Guide – Soaking and Sprouting