With more consumers searching out products and brands that can support a healthy lifestyle and shifting their buying habits accordingly, the well-being trend shows no sign of slowing.
Offering plenty of nutritional clout, sprouted grains are gaining in popularity as an ingredient in mainstream food. Versatile enough to be used in breakfast cereals, ground up into flour or as a topper for baked goods, sprouted grains have a lot to offer.
But what makes sprouted grains good for you?
It’s what’s on the outside that counts
Sprouted grains are what they say on the tin. They are grains that have started to germinate or ‘sprout’, releasing an element of itself into the outside world. Some readers may remember from GCSE Biology that the grain (seed) has three components waiting for the right conditions (temperature, moisture, air, and light conditions) to work together and make a new plant: the germ, the endosperm and the bran. The germ is the embryo, the endosperm is the food, and the bran holds it all in and protects it.
Once the grain starts to germinate biological changes are activated. Enzymes start to break down the endosperm, turning its starch into sugars for the new plant’s growth and protein compounds also start breaking down, becoming peptides and amino acids. Eating the grain at this stage means those nutrients are more readily available to humans and make digestion easier. Silvery Tweed sprouted grains are preserved by slowly drying when these nutrients are at their optimum.
The nutritional benefits of sprouted grains
As sprouted grains are a wholegrain, they have the same health benefits. As wholegrains they are naturally high in fibre and the sprouting process breaks down nutrients such as starches and proteins making them easier to digest.
A nurturing alternative
To bring grains to the right stage in their cycle so that they can be labelled as sprouted grains and have the health benefits we have spoken about is a delicate process. Once sprouted, the grains can be dried and then processed into flour, flakes or kibbles.
We offer wheat, spelt, rye and buckwheat sprouted grains, all of which have been carefully dried so that they can be processed the same way as regular grains. This includes, flaked, kibbled cracked and flour.
For ideas about how you can use them in your next NPD project, contact Chris Green for information and product samples.