Why and How Long Should You Soak Grains?

Lately, there has been increasing discussion about whether grains and cereals might not be part of a healthy diet, but rather a cause of many chronic diseases of the 21st century. 🚫 Preparing quick-cooking oats for breakfast in the morning, you're not nourishing your body with fiber and vitamins; instead, you're depleting essential minerals from your body and overloading your digestive tract. The feeling of fullness (“I'm not hungry, my stomach is full”) from “quick” oatmeal is actually the effort your body makes to digest it. Over time, if you are sensitive to antinutrients, this could lead you to develop autoimmune, hormonal, cardiovascular, and other serious diseases.

There is much debate from people who claim that bread and cereals are fundamentally important. But, looking deeper — our ancestors did not consume large amounts of cereals. And those that were consumed were specially and traditionally prepared before consumption. They were always soaked or even fermented (soured) for an extended period; bread was baked from fresh flour, not on instant yeast as is common now, but on slow and so-called starters. I mentioned this in the newsletter before the Easter holiday, emphasizing the use of flour and yeast.

What is happening now?

Television is full of advertisements for various, to taste, quick, “healthy” breakfasts made from oat flakes or muesli. Instant cereals are a relatively new phenomenon. However, so are the diseases they cause.

People have stopped treating food as nourishment for their bodies; for many, the stomach has become a trash bin, and they hardly consider the consequences. In our time, we are always busy and looking for ways to simplify and speed up everything. Buy ready-made, eat quickly, without thinking about who prepared it and how. But at what cost? At the cost of our own health and the health of our loved ones.

🚫 Modern cereals have changed, and they are not what our predecessors consumed. They are chemically fertilized, treated with pesticides, and grown from GMO seeds.

Even the soil can no longer provide the vitamins and minerals that were present in grains even 100 years ago. And to get even those vitamins that are still there, we need to deactivate the antinutrients that can interfere with mineral absorption and normal digestion; we must always soak grains before cooking.

Why Soak Grains?

Soaking and fermenting grains enriches them with a greater amount of vitamins, as it frees minerals and enzymes, and also partially destroys gluten, phytic acid, and lectins.

As a result, the grain is digested and absorbed much better and easier. Soaked grains are even tolerated by people suffering from food allergies.

Soaking and fermentation naturally replicate the acidic environment of grain germination, which not only destroys the protective mechanisms of the grain (plants protect themselves from insects in this way) but also partially digests the substances within.

Protective Mechanisms of Grains:

1. Phytic Acid, which is mainly found in the bran layer of grains. This acid attaches to minerals and prevents them from being absorbed in our gastrointestinal tract, which over time leads to deficiencies in Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc, and Iron. So, if you have found a mineral deficiency, Phytic Acid is often to blame. It has been proven that a lack of Calcium due to an excess of Phytates in the diet is a cause of osteoporosis and rickets. Additional calcium intake is always shown for people after 45, but it is necessary to know the indicators first, from which to base the dosage. Therefore, I strongly recommend everyone to give up the glorified bran. You will get nothing but a mineral deficiency from them, and fiber can be obtained from other sources and even in larger amounts, safely. But this is my opinion based on observations, you can check this topic yourself. Just don't read "simple" articles, look for scientific and medical sources. But there are not many of them on this topic.

2. Digestive enzyme inhibitors, which deactivate enzymes in our stomach, disrupting normal food digestion and overloading the pancreatic gland.

3.Complex sugars, which our body is unable to digest.

4. Gluten and complex proteins, which cause numerous diseases throughout the body, not just the gastrointestinal tract.

5. Lectins.

Animals, whose main diet consists of grains, have a digestive tract that is distinctly different from ours. They have four stomachs and a much longer intestine than ours.

When we soak grains, their digestion is also aided by Lactobacilli bacteria, which are found in the first and second stomachs of herbivores.

Which Grains and How Long Should They Be Soaked?

All grains need to be soaked.

The time varies based on the amount of antinutrients they contain. Below I have provided the minimum soaking times for grains:

- Oats/oat flakes — 8-12 hours

- Rye — 8 hours

- Brown rice — 12 hours

- White rice — 9 hours

- Wild rice — 5 hours

- Barley — 6 hours

- Buckwheat — 5 hours

- Millet — 5 hours

- Quinoa, amaranth — 3 hours

- Lentils— depending on the variety. Red and yellow for 2 hours. I leave other lentil varieties overnight.

For better absorption and digestion of grains , they should be eaten with healthy fats (butter, coconut oil, ghee). Vegetable (sunflower) and rapeseed oil are not considered healthy fats. Personally, I haven't used it for a long time; weight gain and liver problems are also ensured with its consumption.

A diet built on a large amount of unsoaked, unprepared grain leads to serious consequences. These include thyroid diseases, eczema, allergies, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, Crohn's disease, colitis, Alzheimer's disease, joint problems.

✅ All grains must be soaked without exception. It does not require much effort, just time. But it is better to invest this time now in preventing many diseases than later in treating them.

I hope you now know how, why, and for how long to soak and will follow these simple, but very important rules for the sake of your health.

Wishing you and your loved ones health ❤️