Corn and Sprouts

Part 11 of this series

A supplement to Food and Society
Raw corn and sprouts

16 July 2011

Certain foods must be cooked, such as red kidney beans, in order to break down dangerous chemicals, but what about corn and sprouts?
Which foods are safe to eat raw? Of the foods that must be cooked, what temperature should they reach? And for how long should they cook? And what about the skin on the sprouts? Are those skins safe to eat?
As I mentioned in the main file of the series, I don't like the "baby-food" quality or the flavor of cooked beans. I prefer eating bean sprouts. I like their crunchy and juicy texture, and they can easily be sprinkled into other foods for both visual decorations, and to add crunchiness to them.
Sprouts bring up a few issues that our society ought to investigate. One issue is what we should do with the skin on the seed. As a bean is sprouting, its outer skin is doing... what? Decomposing? Growing bacteria? Should those outer skins be removed and thrown away?
Another issue is how long of bean should grow before we eat it. The flavor of the sprouts changes slightly as they develop leaves, so we can provide ourselves with more variety of flavors by eating them at different stages in their growth. However, as the sprouts grow older, the seed changes color, and apparently decomposes. At what point should we discard the seed? And at what point do the sprouts become so old that they are producing cellulose that we cannot digest? And what about the seed that develop brown colors? Should we cut off and discard the seed and eat only the root and stem?
Lots of people claim that broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and certain other vegetables contain a mysterious chemical that helps stop cancer. And some people claim that broccoli sprouts have an extremely high concentration of this chemical. Are these claims based on serious scientific experiments? Or are they wild speculation? Or are they deliberate marketing scams to sell these particular vegetables or sprouts? If it is true that broccoli sprouts are good for our health, then we ought to know how many days these seeds should be sprouted in order to get the optimal amount of that mysterious chemical. And what about the skin of the broccoli seed? Should we eat them, also?

1) Is raw corn safe to eat?

Raw corn is juicy, crispy, and flavorful!

As I mentioned in the main file of this series of articles about food, my mother became very distressed when I cut the corn kernels off the corn cob, and ate the corn while it was raw.

My mother always cooks corn, mainly because she was raised in a society in which corn is always cooked, and my mother has no desire to wander off the path and experiment with life.

Also, her brother told her that a lot of foods need to be cooked because the heat releases some of the nutrients that we need. Her brother always cooks spinach, for example, because he says the cooking process releases some of the nutrients from the spinach. However, I don't like the taste or consistency of cooked spinach! I prefer spinach to be raw, also.

Would my health improve if I were to occasionally eat cooked spinach?

I like raw corn so much that I can eat it plain, just as it is in this photo; ie, without any sauces, and it doesn't even need salt. I love plain, raw peas, also.

During the winter, I often put frozen corn or peas in my convection toaster oven, but only to warm them up, not to cook them.

I also like corn when it is cooked to a low temperature. The heat causes it to become softer and sweeter, but it remains juicy, crispy, and flavorful.

On very hot summer days, I sometimes eat frozen peas while they are still partially frozen.

I also like both raw and lightly cooked corn with salsa, spices, cheese (both rice and dairy), and sprinkled into salads, soups, and other foods. The photos below show three examples of some of the ways I beaten raw corn.

I put most of the corn kernels from one cob of white corn into three different bowls.		In one bowl I'm adding some red salsa

In another bowl I'm adding some green salsa.		For this example, I'm adding some of the strange and mysterious rice cheese to all three bowls.

Then I add the remaining corn kernels to the three bowls.		Since this article is about sprouts, also, I'm going to add some sprouts to some of the bowls of corn. The photo below shows azuki bean sprouts.

The photo below shows some garbanzo sprouts. These beans only require 20 to 30 hours to sprout.		The final results are three little bowls of "corn salads". All three are extremely juicy, crispy, and flavorful.

2) Sprouts

Azuki bean sprouts

Here are some azuki beans.		After they sprout, the brown skin starts to separate		After another day or so of sprouting, some of the skins are starting to fall off, and leaves are starting to show.

After a few more days, this leaves start to show. The flavor starts to change as the leaves develop. However, I wouldn't say the flavor is better or worse; rather, it is different. By eating the sprouts at different stages of growth, you can provide yourself with sprouts of different flavors, adding variety to your life.

Garbanzo bean sprouts

One of the easiest beans to sprout are garbanzo beans. After only 20 to 30 hours, they are producing roots, and you can eat them in that stage.
This photo shows a bean that is about 30 to 40 hours old. Also, notice the light brown skin that I just removed from the seed. Should we eat the skin? It's not alive, so what is it doing as the seed is sprouting? Is it growing bacteria? Is it decomposing into harmful chemicals? Should we pull the skins off before we eat these sprouts?

Here is a garbanzo bean after another day or so. The leaves are starting to come out, and this alters the flavor, allowing you to have more variety.
I already removed the skin from this sprout.

Broccoli sprouts

One of the most annoying seeds to sprout are broccoli seeds. They require many days to form roots, and then if you want to wait for them to form leaves, you need to wait another week or two.
The worst aspect of them is that their roots create a lot of very fine branches, and so if the sprouts are close together, all of the roots will cling to one another, creating a giant tangle of roots.
The tangle would not be a problem except that all of the skins from the seeds get caught in the tangle, and furthermore, the seeds that don't sprout also get caught in that tangle, and they rot during the many days it takes for these seeds to sprout leaves.
The easiest way to grow broccoli sprouts is to give the seeds plenty of space, and then you can wash away the skins and the seeds that never grow. Incidentally, if you've never tried broccoli sprouts, they are amazingly strong in whatever chemical that broccoli contains. They remind doing more of radishes than broccoli, but radishes seem mild in flavor compared to these. It is amazing that sprouts that look like mild tasting alfalfa sprouts are actually so intense in flavor.