Why use Sprouted Flours?
(This answer is an excerpt by Shelley Summers - Author of Creating Heaven On Your Plate)
Because they are so easy to digest!

In the 25 years I have done nutritional counseling, I have found most bodies struggling to digest grains. Yet these same bodies flourished with grains that had been sprouted. I found that grains normally digested as starches in the body using pancreatic enzymes, but most people were only producing these enzymes in small quantities. When grains were sprouted, the starch molecules changed into vegetable sugars and most people produced large quantities of vegetable enzymes that digest these simple sugars.

So, for years, I had people eat only sprouted breads while they healed their bodies and increased their production of pancreatic enzymes. Over time we could reintroduce ‘regular’ grains but even when bodies could ‘handle’ regular grains, they never wanted large amounts of these in the diet and preferred sprouted grain products.

Sprouting Radically Changes Natural Chemicals in the Grain.
The purpose of all seeds is to reproduce its parent plant. As far as a seed is concerned, being eaten means the end of this purpose! It means death to that line of plants. So, plants, in their wisdom and evolvement, developed defense mechanisms to try and survive even if they were eaten! When I first read the following information about the difficulty of digesting any kind of seed, a picture sprang to mind that made me aware of these plant defense mechanisms.

I saw the image of a horse eating a stalk of wheat. If the seeds were not broken by the teeth, the seeds merrily worked their way through the digestive system untouched until they were pooped out into this wonderful pile of compost, where they were able to develop into a new an beautiful plant, thus completing their true purpose!

These defense mechanisms create havoc in the human digestive system, literally making it difficult to digest any grain, nut or seed! When they are sprouted and the plants growing mechanisms are triggered, all these defense mechanisms are chemically changed or neutralized!

So, sprouting radically changes grains by:
- First, changing the composition of starch molecules, converting them into vegetable sugars, so the body recognizes and digests sprouted grains as a vegetable.
- Second, enzymes are created that aid digestion, complex sugars are broken down which can eliminate painful gas, and vitamin and mineral levels increase.
- Third, sprouting neutralizes potent carcinogens and enzyme inhibitors, as well as an acid that inhibits absorption of calcium, magnesium, iron, copper and zinc.