{"id":14585,"date":"2019-12-18T01:29:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T01:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/squad\/?p=14585"},"modified":"2019-12-18T01:29:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T01:29:57","slug":"why-you-should-add-microgreens-to-your-diet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/nutrition\/why-you-should-add-microgreens-to-your-diet\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Add Microgreens to Your Diet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While some people refer to microgreens as a superfood, scientists prefer the term \u201cfunctional food.\u201d That\u2019s because these seedlings of herbs and vegetables provide key nutrients in a practical manner.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Are sprouts the same as microgreens?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">No. While sprouts are newly germinated seeds that are harvested before their leaves develop, microgreens are harvested from the sprouts after they have fully developed embryonic leaves.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Typically, sprouts grow in water and are harvested in a couple days. Microgreens can grow in water or soil but aren\u2019t usually harvested for 1 to 3 weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although you can grow microgreens from any vegetable or herb, some of the most popular are:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> kale<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> basil<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">beet<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> broccoli<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> mustard<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> parsley<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> pea<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Swiss chard<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> kohlrabi<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><b>The health benefits<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Microgreens provide a wide range of health benefits thanks to their vitamins, minerals and fiber. Their high antioxidant content makes them invaluable for eliminating free radicals from the body to prevent cell damage. A build-up of free radicals\u2014such as those caused by pollution\u2014can cause diseases, such as cancer. Although our bodies can remove some free radicals, antioxidants remove even more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In terms of the type of antioxidants you\u2019ll get from microgreens, it will depend on the plant. For example:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The Brassica family\u2014including broccoli\u2014contains plenty of vitamin E.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Asteraceae microgreens\u2014including lettuce and chicory\u2014have lots of vitamin A.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It\u2019s interesting to note that scientists were able to produce customized microgreens. Their lettuce and chicory microgreens had all the nutrients of green, leafy vegetables but with less potassium, making them suitable for people with kidney disease.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Growing at home<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you\u2019re thinking about adding microgreens to your diet, you can grow them at home in even the most confined spaces. As long as you have sunlight, you don\u2019t even need soil; you can grow them hydroponically.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because they only take a few weeks to grow, you can rotate crops and have fresh options every week.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While some people refer to microgreens as a superfood, scientists prefer the term \u201cfunctional food.\u201d That\u2019s because these seedlings of herbs and vegetables provide key nutrients in a practical manner. Are sprouts the same as microgreens? No. While sprouts are newly germinated seeds that are harvested before their leaves develop, microgreens are harvested from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[453],"tags":[723],"class_list":["post-14585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nutrition","tag-diet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}