As affluent nations confront the proposition that eating bugs is the healthful way of the future, thinking about food can take on new import. It’s easy to become gripped with a sense that something is terribly amiss while food packaging piles up in the preparation of different by-products of corn, soy, and diseased animals bred for maximum girth. The way we eat does not feel good.
As the self-help world will tell you: measure yourself not from where you wish to be but from your starting point. The current regime of food production is preferable to millennia of periodic starvation. Incremental improvement is always possible, but a massive overhaul of how people eat seems a good way to starve. All that pie-in-the-sky philosophy about food is a long way of saying maybe we will munch cinnamon-crusted and savory toasted protein-packed bugs one day. In the meantime, there’s something much more palatable and easily attainable to broaden our food horizons: sprouts.
Mention edible sprouts and two horrified reactions are likely: 1) people will shudder at the thought of unwashed hippies with frayed tote bags and thick socks in Birkenstock sandals. 2) Germaphobes will recoil at the specter of lethal food-borne illness brewing in the fetid Mason jars of disease. Both fears are based on real possibilities, but they are not likely.
Sprouts, which are seeds brought to germination and eaten, often raw, can also just be for normal people. The potential health benefits of sprouts are many, depending on who you talk to. In germinating, the seeds are reduced in their content of carbohydrates and unleash quantities of antioxidants, amino acids, and nutrients—whatever that means. Supposedly, sprouts can even help in regulating blood sugar, which is likely something all of us in the developed world are in need of. If cooked, which is the emphatic recommendation of public health officials, those nutrients are destroyed.
No one wants to die from food-borne illness because they tried to tap into the fountain of youth that is sprouts. Plus, besides the possible health benefits, raw sprouts are darn tasty and interesting. The process of growing teeny seeds and watching them expand first in the soaking and then with each subsequent rinsing every following eight to twelve hours is watching the lifeforce in action. It’s a minor miracle at our fingertips.
Indeed, there’s no need to risk serious pathogens at the grocery store when sprouting your own beans and seeds is quite easy. Companies like the charming SproutPeople offering a “Sproutopia” of growing supplies and seed packages make growing your own a cinch. There’s no dirt, no hard labor, but still the satisfaction of growing a living thing in your care. And then consuming it.
Do bug burgers await us? Who can say? In the meantime, for those brave enough to follow simple instructions there are sprouts to offer that little living crunch of protein-packed, nutrient-rich dining that grows on a small scale—the small tub on the kitchen counter—and expands the palate. As we take new foods into our body, so new ideas can take root in the mind. Whether or not it will save the world, getting into sprouts can make life a little more engaging.
