Worry over alkaloids

[Guest guest]

To improve my health I've been having a smoothie nearly every day. For the last

few months, I've been trying to have that smoothie be a green smoothie in order

to get more veggies into my dietary intake.

One of the biggest things you hear about green smoothies is to " rotate the

greens " because all greens have small amounts of alkaloids. And if you're eating

the same green day after day, week after week, these poisons build up and you

end up getting less healthy rather than more healthy.

Now that I've had some success incorporating greens, I'm looking at sprouting to

take me to another level of healthy nutrition. And, while I might add some

sprouts to my smoothies, I'm primarily looking at growing them to have as a

daily snack and/or salad base.

In a book about green smoothies that I've just recently read, it stated that if

adding sprouts to your green smoothies, you don't want to add very much nor do

you want to do it very often. The reason given was that between approximately

days 3 through 6 of the sprouting process, the alkaloids are at their highest

concentration - as part of the plant's defensive mechanism to keep from being

eaten by animals. (so I guess the tiny sprout plant is supposed to taste bitter

or unpleasant during these days?) My take-away from that was " if sprouts

shouldn't be added very often or in large quantities to a smoothie because of

the poison concentration, wouldn't that also hold true for eating the sprouts? "

Anyway, I'm just wondering if anyone's ever heard of this, worried about it, do

you rotate your sprouts because of it, etc.?

When I eventually do place & receive my first sprout sampler, I'll take

sproutpeople's advice to grow them for several days, tasting them at each rinse

& drain to see when I like them the best. Even before I read about this

worrisome information, I'd been hoping that I'd like my sprouts the best within

the first 24-48 hours.

Thanks for any feedback you've got to share on the subject.

Andresa