I ate broccoli sprouts for 7 days.

Hey guys, it's Robin and welcome back to the Science of Self-Care. Today we are going to be talking about broccoli sprouts. So if you at all consider yourself a biohacker or functional foodie you will have heard that broccoli sprouts are one of the healthiest foods you can include in your diet. Today we're going to be talking about why that is and then we're going to zoom out a little bit and get very practical because we might learn that something is very good for us but whether we actually incorporate that into our daily lives is actually going to make the difference of whether improving our health and reaping the benefits of those healthy foods. So for seven days I ate broccoli sprouts in seven different ways. We're going to be going through all of those recipes and I'm going to be giving a review on how realistic I think it is to incorporate those different recipes into my daily life and I'd love to know also if you have any ways that you like to eat broccoli sprouts. Let's share that below. So let's start talking about these beautiful babes. Why are broccoli sprouts so healthy? So broccoli is part of the cruciferous vegetable family and eating cruciferous vegetables is known to produce sulforaphane in the body. This is one of the most bioactive protective compounds known to be found in foods. It's naturally antimicrobial and has also been shown in studies to have anti-inflammatory effects and anti-cancer or carcinogenic effects. I will list a number of studies down below if you really want to get into the scientific nitty-gritty of sulforaphane but in a very basic sense this compound protects our cells from damage whether that damage be from aging or from carcinogens. So that's cruciferous vegetables in general. So then why are people so obsessed with broccoli sprouts? Well broccoli sprouts actually contain super high levels of a compound called glucoraphanin and this is a precursor to sulforaphane. So our bodies can convert glucoraphanin into sulforaphane and reap all the health benefits that come along with this compound. Broccoli sprouts specifically can contain 10 to sometimes up to 100 times the amount of glucoraphanin that a mature broccoli stock that a mature broccoli stock would offer. So it's kind of like the seeds themselves are super duper densely packed with this amazing anti-carcinogenic anti-aging compound. I did a little research and it turns out this isn't just the case for broccoli sprouts. So cruciferous sprouts in general have much higher levels of glucoraphanin than their mature vegetable counterparts. Here I have some red cabbage sprouts. They're so beautiful by the way and these contain more glucoraphanin that will ultimately be converted into sulforaphane than if you were to literally eat a head of red cabbage. So this is really interesting because I think this also has some implications of if you are eating food very functionally you can incorporate sprouts into your diet perhaps even more easily than you know a whole head of cabbage. But as I mentioned just because we know something's healthy doesn't mean we're actually going to end up eating it. I can imagine a lot of people seeing broccoli sprouts and thinking I don't want to eat this. They also have quite an earthy taste so I'll do a little taste test for you now. They have a quite sprouty taste. It's such a specific taste. Broccoli sprouts kind of taste a little bit more like cooked broccoli in a really good way. I love the taste of broccoli sprouts over other types of sprouts but I explored seven different ways to consume broccoli sprouts so that you actually might feel inspired to eat these super nutrient dense sprouts. So let's get into my experience of seven days of broccoli sprouts. So this is not actually a recipe but on day one I just wanted to try eating sprouts plain like I am now almost as if it was a supplement. I can imagine the diehards just having some sprouts in their fridge and literally just eating it every morning with their supplements. This is not something I would really enjoy doing. So I ranked this experience as a 4.5. I do think broccoli sprouts are more delicious than other types of sprouts. So next I got into some real recipes. I made poke bowls. So essentially I just topped the poke bowl with some sprouts and to be honest I was not a huge fan because I feel like the sprouts really detracted from the poke bowl. The poke bowl had warm rice at the bottom and it had a lot of things going on and to me the sprouts didn't add anything. I rated it a 6 and we were off to a rocky start in the first two days but on day three I had a picnic with a friend in the park and made a super simple little cracker with avocado and sprouts on top. This was so good. I rated it a 9.5 because the combination of avocado and sprouts is just so delicious and I realized in reflecting back on my experience over the week that sprouts go really well with creamy fatty things whether that's avocado or really thick creamy hummus or a creamy cheese it kind of breaks up that fattiness with fresh crunchiness and it's just a great complement so I could really imagine on a regular basis making a toaster cracker with avocado throwing some sprouts on it and eating that very regularly and loving every second of it. Day four. On day four I really wanted to test this theory of sprouts going well with fattiness so I made a salad topped with sardines, olive oil, and olive tapenade. It was super fatty and salty. Added sprouts on top. Really delicious as well. I think my theory stands and I also rated this a 9.5 so yeah two days of something really fatty salty and creamy beautiful with a broccoli sprout topping. Oh so good. The next day to further understand why exactly I didn't like the sprouts and poke bowl I thought and hypothesized based on my fattiness theory that sprouts would not go very well with kind of plain starchy things like rice or potatoes so I just made a bowl of golden rice. Essentially it's just rice and turmeric. I made that as a base. It's so yummy. Then I put sprouts on top. It wasn't yummy so yeah I don't know if it's just me but I think sprouts kind of detract from plain starchy things and really add to creamy fatty things. That's my theory based on four are we on day four based on four or five days of experimentation so my golden rice with sprouts actually got rated a three because the sprouts just completely took away from this really delicious golden rice that I often make. The next day I decided to try a popular internet recipe that I found which is blending orange juice and broccoli sprouts just like a quick blend and drinking it as a morning drink. This was so good. It was honestly really good. I like it more than plain orange juice. I think plain orange juice can sometimes be just too sweet. The sprouts added a fun little flavor on the side and a freshness and even a little bit of a crunch but not quite because it was blended. Really delicious. I rated this an 8.5. Fed it to my friend. She agreed. This is Yasmin. Broccoli sprout OJ is really delicious. Okay the next day I decided to make a proper smoothie because I think this is probably one of the most easy ways to incorporate sprouts and vegetables into your diet especially in the morning. I made a smoothie with blueberry, cashew butter, cacao nibs, and the broccoli sprouts and oat milk. I didn't want to add any more vegetables because I really wanted the sprouts to stand alone and to be honest I did not taste them really at all so you could probably get away with adding many more sprouts and many more vegetables into such a smoothie. It was super sweet because of the blueberries and the cashew butter and yeah I'm rating this an 8 because it was delicious but the sprouts weren't really there to me. They just kind of disappeared into the mix so if you're someone who really does not like the idea of eating broccoli sprouts but wants to reap all the health benefits I would highly recommend just putting it in a smoothie every day or regularly and you'll be in great health. So I believe that was all seven days we just went through. I am going to try to make guacamole with sprouts today. I think it's the next thing I'm missing in my life. The avocado cracker with sprouts was so good. So I think if you make a proper guac with avocado sprouts and garlic salts it's gonna be so good with chips with anything. In conclusion reflecting back I think sprouts are actually very easy to incorporate in your diet. I think they go well with fatty things and I think they go well in blended juices and smoothies because they're just so easy to hide and to just consume quickly. I especially after learning more about the benefits of broccoli sprouts I'm so excited to be incorporating them more into my diet and it's not just broccoli sprouts it's other types of cruciferous sprouts that have these amazing compounds. I'd love to know if you eat sprouts if you eat broccoli sprouts or other types of sprouts and how you consume them. If you have any favorite recipes share down below. I'd love to start a community focused on actually incorporating health science into our lives and making it fun and accessible. So thank you guys so much for watching if there are any other health foods you'd like me to try to incorporate for seven days I'm kind of loving this kick of seven days of a different health food. So let me know down below and I'll see you next time. Bye bye! My name is Robin from Science of Self-Dare. Drink that shit. Drink that shit. I'm doing a seven days of broccoli sprouts video. I actually really like it. Does anyone want to try?