The book pictured above has inspired me today to buy my first organic sprouted spelt flour.

Long ago I replaced white flour (largely) for whole wheat, as it is less processed and has more nutrition.  Now this sprouted flour is a step further back before either were so strip-mined, to a time when grain was ground after it had time to begin to sprout, due to lack of efficiency in harvest methods as well as some moisture present in storage bins.  The sprouted grain of many years ago had much more nutrition as well as taste than our current fare, but was dispensed with because it was not considered not as stable as seed dispossessed of these virtues. (This change – choosing efficiency and profitability over nutrition – corresponds precisely with America’s meteoric rise in obesity and dis-ease.)  Interestingly, the body reads sprouted flour as a vegetable instead of a starch, turning it immediately into energy instead of storing it as fat, and it supposedly has all sorts of health benefits such as having much more fiber, being easier to digest, non allergenic, low glycemic… yada yada.

The bottom line for me is that sprouted flour is actually food, instead of the trumped up emptiness that fills so much of the baked goods around.  The modern ultra-processed food is so vacuous we eat more and more of it. I would rather imbibe something more real, and then be satisfied with less.  Remember Michael Polan on my blog who summed up his advice to confused omnivores: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”

The trick is identifying what is actually food, and even what are plants!  After two years of prayer and research, I’m getting close.  I choose “organic” to avoid anything genetically modified, and steer clear of any man-made additives, fertilizers, preservatives or pesticides (i.e. chemicals, drugs and poisons)…  I also want to explicitly not support agribusinesses’ manufacturing motives of greed, duplicity, selfishness and monopoly.  I try to by from local people that I know and agree with, and by voting this way with my dollar and my mouth, I hope I am reshaping the world as a better place beyond just reducing my carbon footprint.

You can check out the sprouted flour here (I got it locally, along with some sprouted flour pasta.) Also check out Ezekiel Bread; the cinnamon raisin variety is available at Trader Joes, and my regular supermarket has three varieties (including one with 7 organic sprouted grains) in the freezer section where they keep the gluten-free stuff.

I look forward to experimenting with this sprouted flour and am grateful that I’m getting some clarity about what constitutes a whole food at a more fundamental level (other than the obvious organic fruits and vegetables).

Join me in moving further away from the vapid corporate manipulations that are impostors of real food, which serve only their own bottom line.  It is time for me to train my taste buds toward more wholesome and nurturing grains.