Veggie takes center stage in fight against hunger
By Michelle Rindles
Staff Writer
The Union (Californian based Newspaper)
Nevada City based SeThInk Media company hopes to advance the sprouts’ cause to help end hunger worldwide with an educational DVD. While organic foods and vegetarian diets have seen a dramatic increase in popularity in recent years, other foodies are even more dedicated than that. In raw or living food diets, people eat only uncooked foods as a way to preserve the enzymes within.
Sprouts take the center stage there.
Raw foods are easier to digest and lead to healthier bodies and more energy, proponents say. But a raw diet presents numerous challenges. How does a person keep their food living until they’re ready to eat? Many use jars with water and seeds inside. To keep the sprouts alive, they must dreain and rinse the sprouting seeds each day.
“You miss one rinse and they go bad,” said SeThInk founder Daniel Cavallaro. “It takes several days of focus and intention.”
It’s impractical for large scale production, busy lifestyles or climates with water shortages.
“If this is a good way of growing food, why are we having to waste so much water?” Daniel said.
A solution came to inventor Robin Marche while he was living outside arid Tucson, Ariz., cooking for a commune there in the 1980’s and ‘90’s. He devised a new water-friendly method to cultivate sprouts that eliminated the need to rinse. It can be used in large-scale production, and the sprouts also stay fresher longer.
Nevada City’s SeThInk Media company produced a DVD training people how to use that method – and another method of producing un-processed ‘living’ oils.
The company wants to bring the unusual diet into the mainstream, and also to developing countries with limited water supply and nutrient-deficient diets. One organization brought the technique to Haiti in the wake of January’s devastating earthquake.
It could be a life-saver for people where a tough climate hinders traditional agriculture.
“We want to share it with the right people so they can do good in the world,” Cavallaro said.
A workshop on the new sprouts-growing technique is set for 2-4 p.m. each Saturday in the month of July at the Alternative Building Center, 563 Idaho Maryland Road, in Grass Valley. It is co-sponsored by Nevada City’s A.P.P.L.E. Center for Sustainable Living. Participants can sign up online at www.seedsofsustainability.org/nclocalworkshop.htm
The cost is $55, which includes a copy of the DVD, a $47 value.
