Tiny sprouts provide big nutrition – AHA

Move over baby carrots and petite peas. Even tinier vegetables are catching on as go-to healthy foods, according to the American Heart Association News.

Microscale vegetables, a growing food category that includes sprouted seeds, are miniature in size yet big in nutrition. Eating sprouts well before they become full-blown plants can crank up certain nutrient levels considerably, said Emily Ho, nutrition professor and director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

“Five- to seven-day-old seed sprouts can often offer more nutrition benefits than the mature plants,” said Ho, who’s known around campus as the “broccoli lady” due to her research on the health benefits of broccoli sprouts.