Most health food stores offer several versions of sprouted buckwheat. One can buy the groats which have been dehydrated and then sold in whole form, or choose flour made by grinding the dried sprouted kernels.
As I bet you've noticed, raw diets are a big thing these days, and sprouted grains are part of that movement. Buckwheat isn't technically a grain, but some of the same principles apply to buckwheat as to wheat or barley. On their website the Whole Grains Council lists the benefits of sprouted grains. And here's an article from SHAPE magazine about how sprouted grains keep you slim and healthy.
For those determined to include buckwheat sprouts in their daily diet, here's a site which explains how to sprout buckwheat and then use the sprouted seeds. In addition to this site, there are a number of other how-to's online, some of which suggest you use a dehydrator and some which recommend using the oven to dry out the sprouts to make flour.
I'm a very DIY person, but I feel concern about people sprouting buckwheat at home and then storing or dehydrating the sprouts.
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| Buckwheat sprouts. The "stainless steel sprouter" looks a bit like a dog dish to me. Good use for it, I reckon. |
The first of the two reasons I usually don't sprout buckwheat at home to make flour: bacteria. The dehydrator method in particular alarms me. Sprouts are naturally damp, and because they grow so close together, it's easy for them to go funky on you.
I do approve of sprouting in general, and in fact I recommend this book:
The author, Peter Burke, mentions sprouting buckwheat in his book, and in particular he includes a caution about potential toxicity. This is the second reason I don't sprout buckwheat to make flour.
People (and farm animals) who eat a lot of buckwheat sprouts can have trouble with their skin. It's the hulls of the buckwheat which cause the issue.
The hulls contain a toxin called fagopyrin, which gets its name from Fagopyrum, part of buckwheat's botanical name.
Buckwheat's not the only sproutable food which contains potential toxins. This sprouting website provides information on the natural toxins found in sunflower seeds and other seeds.
Too much fagopyrin causes humans (and chickens, to whom buckwheat hulls are often fed) to develop serious sunburn-type sensitivity after even brief exposure to the sun. As this online article describes, unpleasant skin sensations can grow so intense that people find it painful to wash their hands under room-temperature tap water. After sufferers eliminated buckwheat sprouts from their diets. It took weeks or months for the symptoms to disappear.
It's important to note that the people who get these severe symptoms are taking in a lot of buckwheat sprouts, which are often added to homemade healthy "green" juices. This trend started in the 1960s and was advocated by health cooperatives and books about organic foods and cooking.
It's the hulls which cause all the trouble. In commercially-prepared groats or flour, hulls are partially or totally removed and the groats have been roasted. But with living sprouts, the inner linings of hulls are in contact with the cotyledon, the heart of the seed which grows into a green stem with twin leaves.
The same quality which makes the sprout so desirable -- the freshness of the green tube which pulls nutrients up from the heart of the buckwheat kernel -- is also the problem element. See this suggestion from the sprouting site referenced earlier:
How much fagopyrin can a person ingest without health repercussions? Personally, I don't eat many, if any, because I'm sensitive to a lot of substances, both human-made and naturally-occuring. But for the average person, the figure I've seen is an upper limit of 40 grams per day. Here's the medical research abstract that's the source for that figure.
40 grams is about an ounce and a half of sprouts. So, for visual comparison, here's a 4 ounce package of alfalfa sprouts. If 40 grams or 1.5 oz. of buckwheat sprouts is a safe daily serving size, then you could have the equivalent of between a fourth and a third of this container.
If you do choose to sprout buckwheat, here's a little more information about the anatomy of a buckwheat plant from seed to sprout: sprouting is the process of giving seeds, beans, and grains enough air and water (and sometimes soil) that they'll put up a green stem and two rounded-edge leaves called a cotyledon.
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| http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-turnip-brassica-rapa-seedling-with-cotyledons-and-one-true-leaf-forming-35136093.html |
These littlle cotyledon leaves aren't the baby version of the "true" leaves of the plant. They are simpler than the true leaves, more rounded, and in twin pairs. Cotyledon leaves are specialized for the growing process, and they indicate where the plant goes from the sprouting phase to the mature phase. Once the true leaves come up from a stem growing out of the cotyledon, that's the end of the sprouting process.
Here's a picture of a young buckwheat plant in the planter top of my rain barrel. It's too developed to be a sprout, as yu can tell from the size. By looking at the leaves, we can see its sprout history.
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The upper and lower leaves of this buckwheat plant are different from one another. The lower leaves come from the cotyledon. They are rounded and in a pair close to the main stem. The upper leaf is pointed, with a sculpted edge, and it's by itself, not in a pair. It also comes out from the main stem of the plant on its own leaf stem. So the upper leaf is a true leaf. If this plant had been harvested when the cotyledon leaves were smaller and at the top of the stem, that would be the largest, most developed buckwheat sprout, more of a seedling. Sprouts are usually harvested at earlier stage.
My job here is done. I've explained why I lean against sprouting buckwheat kernels, but I've also provided info on how to do it safely and how much is considered safe for human (and animal) ingestion.
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