Amazing Alfalfa: The Benefits of Alfalfa

Our youngest son has become what we lovingly label, a nutrition nut! After some years of college drinking, fast food eating and other less than desirable health habits, he and his long time partner finally decided to reclaim their youth and embarked on several different nutrition regimes before finally arriving at the Raw Foods method.

He would love for his entire family to join him on this journey, but we are too deeply engrained in food as tradition and ritual to become raw food advocates, even though we eat lots of raw foods! But along the way he has become quite the authority on all things herbal and plant related as pertains to nurtition and health. And we've made some of those recommendations part of our nutrition also.

Alfalfa is one food or plant that I just never considered to be edible or needed for human consumption but here's why I was wrong.

What is Alfalfa

Alfalfa is a perennial hreb that grows wild in low valleys around the world and is cultivated by farmers to feed their livestock. As a little girl, I remember the alfalfa fields on our farm, but never pictured myself eating it someday! The plant has a erect, smooth stem about a foot tall with blue to purple flowers during the summer months and then in the fall it proudces a spiral coiled seed pod. It's actually a member of the legume family, related to peas!

Author John Heinerman writes in Heinerman's Encyclopedia of Fruits, Vegetables and Herbs that the Arabs and Persians were the first to feed their horses this hay plant for their horses, calling this plant The Father of All Food, They believed that it was alfalfa that made their Arabian horses strong and sleek.

Today's modern herbalists agree with the Arabians completely stating that in terms of nutritional value, the plant is so rich in calcium that when burned, it's ashes are almost 99 percent pure calcium. Alfalfa also contains vitamins A, B-1, B-6, B-12, C, E and K-1, niacin, pantothenic acid, biotin, folic acide as well as many essential and nonesential amino acids. It contains 15 to 25 percent plant protein, majorminerals and trace elements like phosphorus, manganese, iron, zinc and copper and has naturally occurring sugars of sucrose and fructose.

Alfalfa is the only known plant to contain every vitamin!

You can read the nutritional breakdown of alfalfa here.

Why should we use Alfalfa

Besides the tremendous effect of the naturally occuring vitamins, minerals, calcium and proteins in alfalfa, there are a couple of other important benefits to be had from adding some form of alfalfa supplement to your daily diet.

Clinical nutritionists in recent research has demonstrated that alfalfa meal fed to caged monkeys, whose diets also included high levels of cholesteral, helped prevent the monkeys from getting atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries. It also reduced the serum cholesterol levels in monkeys with high cholesterol.

Taking 2 capsules of a good quality of alfalfa powder, like Nature's Way, can be a natural way to fight high cholesterol and related heart disease.

In addition, alfalfa and it's high chorophyll levels are used by my son in his "green smoothie" concoctions to fight infections and stimulate the bodies natural healing processes.

Dr. Henry G. Bieler writes about the infection fighting qualities of alfalfa in his bestselling nurtrition book, Food is Your Best Medicine. Dr. Bieler was known as a doctor to the stars in Hollywood for years and his homeopathic food medicines are still the basis for many food remedies like green smoothies.

Other health claims by proponents include that alfalfa anti-oxidant properties help prevent many degenerative diseases including heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis and even cancer. untold number of degenerative diseases. Some examples are heart disease, menopausal symptoms, osteoporosis and evencancer.

Some studies have shown that patients with ulcers have benefited from drinking alfalfa juice. And for fighting infection, alfalfa has been proven to both fightr and prevent infection.

Making your own healing alfalfa smoothie

I've been using this once a week and when I feel I've been exposed to a virus or cold, I use it daily. We are now growing alfalfa in an herb box on the back patio just for green smoothies. The mature plant is not digestible with human tummies, but like many other greens, the young tender shoots are perfect. I combine about 1 cup of shoots, 1 cup of grapefruit or pineapple juice and water. Blend in good high powered blender and drink 4-6 oz.

You may flinch at the taste the first few times, but eventually, it begins to actually taste very fresh and exhilirating. I promise, it does!

Making your own alfalfa sprouts

But my favorite way to eat alfalfa is in sprouts. They are kind of pricey in the store and so easy to make yourself. To make them, soak a tsp. of alfalfa seeds in a quart of tepid water overnight. Next morning, rinse throroughly and drain. Place them in a jar tightly covered with a piece of damp cheesecloth. Store in a dark place. I just set my inside a bottom cupboard that I don't open often. Twice a day, (I do this in the morning while cleaning up the kitchen and in the evening after dinner) rinse the sprouting seeds and drain, then return to the jar and the dark.

After 4-5 days, place the sprouts in the sunlight for a few hours to green then, then store in the refrigerator.

Our favorite way to eat alfalfa sprouts is in Avocado and sprout pita pocket sandwiches. The crunchy alfalfa and the smooth creamy avocado with some sliced red onion makes a delicious healthy nutrition rich sandwich.

In the 1984 Journal of Nutrition, the University of California at Davis found that alfalfa extracts with a lot of manganese improved the condition of a diabetic who failed to respond to insulin. Because my family is diabetes prone, I'm getting a head start by proactively choosing food that will naturally fight this disease pattern.

Alfalfa is now a two to three times weekly food or supplement. I drink green smoothies with fresh alfalfa, make alfalfa sprout sandwiches and if I don't have time for the fresh, I take two alfalfa meal capsules.

I highly recommend adding the horse and cow hay of Alfalfa to your own diet intake.

Resources

Juicing for Health

Nutritional breakdown for alfalfa