Sprouts: The Miracle Food [Paperback]

Steve Meyerowitz (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Integral Yoga Dist (1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878736035
• ISBN-13: 978-1878736031
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,786,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Steve was pronounced "Sproutman" by Vegetarian Times Magazine in a 1979 feature article that explored the why's and wherefores of his 100% sprout diet. While over 2 decades time, most diets change, Steve is still a big "believer" in healthy diet and lifestyle.

Steve got interested in natural foods after a 20 year effort to correct chronic allergies and asthma with conventional medicine. He made dramatic changes in his diet and within two months of eating a strict "living foods," vegetarian diet, his lifelong symptoms vanished. He continued to practice a 100% raw foods diet (nothing cooked, packaged, canned, frozen, or processed) for five years. During that time, he also experimented with other extreme diets such as fruitarianism (just fruit), juice fasting for as long as 100 days, and briefly, breatharianism (no food, no water).

Steve's innovative kitchen gardening techniques and the cuisine he developed from them, gave rise to a "School for Sprouts." He began teaching indoor gardening 12 stories above the streets of New York City. He called his no-cooking school, The Sprout House, since so much of his cuisine included vegetables from his kitchen garden-sprouts. Steve invented two home sprouters, The Flax Sprout Bag and a tabletop greenhouse called, Sproutman's Kitchen Garden Salad Grower. He also supplied his growing kits and a full line of organic sprouting seeds via mail order.

Steve has since sold the mail order business and he and his family now breathe fresher air in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. Much of the information from his teaching years have been related in his books. He has the most popular books on sprouts, including Sprouts the Miracle Food, Sproutman's Kitchen Garden Cookbook, and Wheatgrass Nature's Finest Medicine, to name a few. But he also has other books on subjects such as fasting and raw juice therapy.

Steve has been featured on PBS, the Home Shopping Network, TV Food Network, and in Prevention, Better Nutrition, and Organic Gardening magazines. In 3 minutes on QVC, 953 people ordered his Cookbook and Kitchen Garden Salad Grower. You can visit him at http://www.Sproutman.com/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

153 of 154 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a complete guide; Somewhat confusing; Mostly good info., January 20, 2005

By 

Groovy Vegan (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)   

This review is from: Sprouts The Miracle Food: The Complete Guide to Sprouting (Paperback)

Steve Meyerowitz, a.k.a. Sproutman has been sprouting since the 1970s, and owns a company selling sprouting equipment and seeds. I've read several of his books and chatted with him in person about sprouting. Sproutman knows his stuff, and IMO, anything he writes about sprouting is worth reading. I have grown magnificent sunflower sprouts by using a Sproutman Sprouthouse (a bamboo basket in a plastic house) and following Sproutman's instructions. If you have good sprouting seeds and follow the instructions in this book, I suspect you too will grow awesome sprouts.

Unfortunately, the book is not that well organized and the instructions for sprouting, a fairly simple process, are unnecessarily confusing. There are many methods of growing sprouts, such as baskets, sprouting bags, glass jars, open-ended glass tubes with screens on both ends, trays, etc. This book gives instructions for only 3 methods: baskets, bags, and trays. Sproutman doesn't explain that upfront, however. If you want to use one of those 3 methods, the instructions are knowledgeable and detailed. BUT: I suggest that when you choose one of these methods, you read through the entire chapter first, because if you try to follow along step-by-step, it's easy to mess up.

For example, in the chapter titled, "The Technique", Sproutman launches into instructions for using a sprouting basket, without first explaining that this technique just ONE of many sprouting methods. For this technique he says to soak 5 rounded tablespoons of seeds. He doesn't explain until 7 pages later that you use 5 tablespoons of seed for an 8 inch basket, 6 to 7 tablespoons of seed for a 9 inch basket, and 2 to 3 tablespoons of seed for a 6 inch basket. A beginning basket sprouter who tries to follow his instructions without reading the entire chapter first, could easily make the mistake of using the wrong amount of seeds for the basket size.

In the next chapter, Sproutman gives instructions for how to use a sprout bag, a different technique. The first thing I would want to know about this is, what are the best seeds for growing in a sprout bag? That information is there, along with days 'til maturity-in the middle of the chapter.

Another thing that's important to a good sprout book is information about seeds. What are the varities, the days until harvest, the uses and tastes, etc? There's chart near the end of the book which gives this information, but the seed varities are not in alphabetical order. I can't figure out any logic to the way the chart is sorted, so if you want to look up a seed variety, you have to read down the entire list. Also, there are some types of fairly popular sprouting seeds missing from the chart, for example, broccoli sprouts.

Although I think most of Sproutman's information is excellent, albeit a bit disorganized, one thing I take issue with are his frequent sermons about why sprouting jars should not be used. I first used a sprouting jar in 1984, and my jar sprouts have always turned out just fine, without all those immature yellow sprouts Sproutman warns of. If you are careful not to use too many seeds and to shake your sprouts back and forth so they drain well and lay the jar on its side, your jar-sprouted sprouts will turn out just fine. Also Sproutman says a jar requires cheesecloth, screens and rubberbands. Back in 1984, a decade prior to the book's publication, I used a lid which was a plastic screen and have never had to hassle with cheesecloth, screens and rubberbands. In addition, he says automatic sprouters sell in the range of $450 to $1000. It's somewhat possible that information was accurate in the 1990s, but in the 2000s, one can find new automatic sprouters for a lot less than $450.

Some of the book's strengths include the chapter discussing which type of water to use on sprouts, the nutritional information scattered throughout the books, and the presence of an index. I personally think the book's dumb puns are a strength, but I'm sure the majority of readers will not. :-)

Despite my qualms with this book, Sproutman is outstanding in his field, and I still recommend it to anyone who wants to sprout via vertical sprouter (basket), bag, or tray, or learn about sprouting in general. If you're using either a vertical sprouter or a bag, I suggest first reading the succinct review of instructions on page 173 for the vertical sprouter and p. 175 for the sproutbag.

63 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very comprehensive and helpful, April 20, 2002

By 

Lori (Oregon Coast) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sprouts The Miracle Food: The Complete Guide to Sprouting (Paperback)

Yes, as one person noted, the humor is sort of out of place. Bad puns throughout. I'm still giving it a 5 because it's the most helpful sprout book I've seen.

Friends of mine recommended it to me - they have an attractive set-up of baskets of sprouts growing in little seed-germinator covered plastic trays. They are thrilled with the book, and we are excited about starting to sprout. We did sprouts years ago in jars, but this system is better.

Though the book could be more condensed, it's still an easy read in a few hours. And where else is this vital information available in such thorough detail? If you are considering sprouting, you will find the information valuable.

67 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly a Wonderful and Complete Book on Sprouting, September 18, 2002

By 

Thomas P. "Tom P." (Martinton, IL USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sprouts The Miracle Food: The Complete Guide to Sprouting (Paperback)

This is a great book for a person who is interested in sprouting; it is very detailed and is truly full of very interesting and useful information. The book also helps to nullify a lot of the myth about toxins and hidden dangers in sprouts. The real dangers, in actuality, exist in cooked, processed, adulterated, toyed-with, sprayed, chemicalized, distorted foods (which our grocery shelves are full of). I am now 50 years old. Back in my youthful college days, I used to sprout a great deal, eating living foods exclusively. Though I stayed being a vegetarian, I got back into the cooked food craze... eating food like it was a drug for "taste" only. I work with the multiply handicapped and even though I am a teacher I have to do a lot of lifting (of adults who are not at all feather-weight). My arthritis (which runs in the family) was killing me, despite taking all kinds of natural and man made supplements. Getting back to live food was the answer I needed. Steve's book was inspirational and very helpful. I should have never deviated from what was truly the most nutritious way to eat!
There are many ways of sprouting. I happen to like the sproutpeople.com sprouters best of all. Steve's book is a priceless tool for anyone interested in sprouting... it has all kinds of neat tips and suggestions.
Also, one suggests doing a web search on Dr. Budwig's Diet... as most people are seriously deficient in essential fatty acids of the proper type. I take my oil with a little bit of live yogurt.
Anyway... I would not want Steve's book, including his Kitchen Garden book... missing from my shelves!
As Hippocrates said: "Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food."