12 Steps to Whole Foods

CHAPTER 7
Sprouting and Dehydrating
Your Goal:
To increase your use of live, sprouted foods—a quantum leap in your nutrition!—and to learn to use a
dehydrator for live snacks, lunches, and treats.
What You’ll Need:
• A few pint jars (or quarts, if you have a big family) and a few sprouting lids than you can buy
very inexpensively on Amazon.com or at your health food store. I actually just make my own
by purchasing plastic mesh sheets at a craft store and cutting them circle-size, to fit inside a
regular or wide-mouth canning ring. Just use a canning lid as a template to cut them out. (See
photo below.)
• Some raw seeds, grains, legumes, and nuts, which you can purchase at any health food store,
usually in the bulk-foods section.
• A dehydrator (one with up to nine levels if you have a large family or want to put up garden
produce in larger batches). See “Robyn’s Recommendations” on GreenSmoothieGirl.com for
suggestions about the best option for raw-food preservation.
This month is a rather dramatic change for most
people, because very few of us are eating live foods,
especially sprouts. The potential to relieve stress on
your body’s organs is enormous when you take this
step, because you are providing live digestive
enzymes rather than drawing on your body’s reserves.
Sprouting and then drying your food below 116°
preserves living enzymes, vitamins, and minerals.
You may know that the juice of wheat grass is a
powerfully medicinal digestive aid and blood
oxygenator. But it isn’t a complete, life-sustaining
food by itself. When you soak and, therefore, sprout
wheat (or another grain, nut, or seed), you bring life to
it. You are then able to use the dense, readily available
nutrition in that seed before the plant uses it.
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw 12 Steps to Whole Foods 199