 Nuts and seeds are a common staple that we consume almost daily, they make a wonderful nutrition packed healthy snack to take on the go or just to munch on dissatisfied mid-afternoon hunger pangs. They've been eaten by our ancestors over many many years, however what a lot of us don't realise is that like grains and legumes they can also contain substances known as anti-nutrients that interfere with our body's ability to absorb nutrients. Through this simple process of soaking grains, nuts, seeds and legumes, it improves their nutrition and reduces their anti-nutrient levels making them more beneficial to the body. Sprouting and fermenting also takes it to a whole new level. So in this video I'll be showing you how to soak and sprout nuts, seeds, grains and legumes to help them to do more easily digestible and to help improve nutrient absorption. Plant foods like nuts, seeds, legumes and grains, especially raw seeds, contain naturally occurring anti-nutrients like phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors. These nutrients prevent the seeds from sprouting too early, however they also have been found to impact humans by binding to nutrients in the body which can contribute to nutrient deficiencies and digestive issues. While our digestive process in the body can neutralise some phytic acid, it's important to soak, sprout or ferment foods that are particularly high in this nutrient to help reduce levels even further and prevent an overload on the body. You can dehydrate them afterwards as well to bring them back to their crunchy tasty selves again, which as well can help to reduce phytic acid even more. Traditionally many cultures used to soak, sprout or ferment nuts, seeds, grains and legumes before they were able to consume them as they understood that it would enhance the body's ability of absorbing the nutrients within these foods and help deactivate anti-nutrients like phytates, lectins, tannins, gluten and other harmful compounds that bind to minerals in the body and prevent them from being absorbed. In today's video, I'll show you step by step how to soak and sprout nuts, seeds, grains and legumes to make them more easily digestible and to enhance their nutrient absorption in the body. When soaking nuts and seeds, you'll need warm filtered water and salt. The warm filtered water helps to increase the bioavailability of many nutrients, especially B vitamins, while neutralising many of the enzyme inhibitors. The salt helps to activate enzymes that deactivate the enzyme inhibitors found in these foods. However, when soaking grains or legumes, you'll also need a more acidic substance such as yoghurt, buttermilk, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, whey, milk kefir or coconut kefir. You can also use baking soda for legumes such as lentils, which I'll be soaking today. For the acidic medium today, I used apple cider vinegar that I had bought from the store, as the apple cider vinegar I was making wasn't quite ready yet. It still has a few more weeks left of fermenting before I can use it in my recipes. The nuts I'll be soaking today are macadamias, however, they cannot actually sprout, same with pecans and walnuts, while seeds like raw pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds which I'll be sprouting today actually make the best candidates for sprouting. The plastic packaging that these nuts and seeds came in, I actually put in my soft plastics recycling bag which I then take to the supermarket to drop off at our red cycle soft plastics recycling drop off points. Now if you do choose to soak other nuts like almonds, just make sure that they're non-irradiated as this will prevent them from sprouting. You'll know if they do not sprout, otherwise you can source non-irradiated nuts or seeds online or ask at your local store. So to get started today I thought I'd break it down and show you how to soak nuts and seeds first and then show you how to soak leggings like lentils today. So to begin with grab the nuts or seeds you're going to be soaking today and pop them into a glass jar with some filtered water that covers just above the level of the nuts and seeds in your glass jar. If you find that during the soaking period that the water gets absorbed, just add more water in as you don't want to leave them to dry out. You want to ensure that they're submerged in the water solution, then you're going to add one tablespoon of sea salt or pink Himalayan salt. Once you've added the seeds, water and salt to your glass jar, secure with either a cheesecloth and rubber band or you can use these sprouting lids like I have used. I find they're really helpful as they're easy to drain out the water later on rather than taking off and putting on a cheesecloth each time. Then all you do is leave the seeds or nuts to sit on your countertop in a warm dry place to soak for how many hours it takes. Each seed and nut is different and how long it takes to soak. I do have a chart on my blog post for each kind of seed, nut, grain and legging which shares how long each of these types of grains and seeds take to soak or sprout. So if you are interested in finding out how long the seeds or nuts or grains or legumes you're soaking will take, you can find out the times there. I'll link this post in the description below. For legumes and grains it's a little different, so here I'm going to use lentils. All you do is add them to a glass jar with some water and then you're going to add an acidic medium to them as they usually contain higher amounts of phytic acid. An acidic medium again can be yogurt, kefir, whey, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and things like that. I'm going to be using apple cider vinegar today as that's what I had on hand. I was going to use my homemade apple cider vinegar, however it wasn't quite finished fermenting and still had a few more weeks. So I just used our store bought one that we had stored at home. Then once you've added it to a glass jar, again secure with a cheesecloth or you can use a sprouting lid like I have and let it sit in a dry warm place. I just let it sit on my countertop. For lentils it takes around 12 hours to soak or up to three days to sprout. Whereas sunflower seeds only take eight hours to soak and 12 to 24 hours to sprout, so they're a little bit less. So for the sunflower seeds and lentils I let them sit on our countertop just to soak for around 8 to 12 hours. The macadamias only require two hours to soak, so once they'd finished I then drained them out in a colander, popped them into a blender and made them into some nut milk by adding some water. Once it was finished blending I then strained it out using a nut milk bag. You can find the recipes for how to make macadamia milk and macadamia cheese in my blog post which I'll link in the description below as well. But all you do is basically add the macadamia milk pulp to your blender along with some lemon juice, some nutritional yeast, sea salt and garlic powder then you just blend that up on high speed until it's well combined and then store it in the fridge until you're ready to use it. Once the sunflower seeds had finished soaking I then rinse them out with some fresh water then let them stand upside down in a bowl to drain for the next 24 hours. For the lentils I did the same I rinse them out then drain them and let them sit upside down in a bowl to drain over the next three days. I made sure to rinse the lentils and seeds a couple of times a day just to make sure they weren't getting too dry and again to mimic the germination process in those seeds and lentils. It was very exciting to see little sprouts appear in the sunflower seeds and lentils over the few days, I just love seeing this process unfold. Once the sunflower seeds had finished sprouting I then pop them into my dehydrated to dry out again this helps to reduce phytic acid as well and also helps to increase shelf life of these seeds and nuts, lentils and grains. I dehydrated them over a 24 hour period just until they were completely dry and there was no moisture left on them. To make sure they were dry I would just fill them before I would pack them into the glass jar to make sure that there was no moisture left as if there is any moisture on them it can cause mold to grow. Once they felt dry enough I then packed them into a glass jar and stored them in my pantry to use later on in the week. I will be making a vegan sunflower seed yoga later on this week so do stay tuned if you're interested in seeing that it will be up in next week's videos. We've had non-stop rain this past week so everything is totally soaked. It's actually lovely to listen to when you're inside. However Ari has been quite restless. She hasn't been as active as she usually is so she's been trying to accept some of that energy in her kennel which has been very funny. Once the lentils were finished a few days later I then popped them onto the dehydrator and dehydrated them for around 24 hours or until they were dry. Again I made sure to check that they were dry by just feeling them to make sure that there was no moisture left. Then I popped them into a glass jar and stored them in my pantry to use in later recipes that I made that week. That is how you soak or sprout those nuts, seeds and legumes. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. I hope it inspired you guys to try soaking or sprouting some of the nuts, seeds, grains, legumes and beans that you consume in your daily life. Thank you so much for sticking out this whole video. I really hope you enjoyed it and I hope to see you again in my next video. Bye!