Nut butters are worth all the hype they’ve been given. Seriously. There’s no tastier and easier way to get lots of protein, flavor, and nuttier nutrition into your mouth. Unfortunately, the process of making nut butter isn’t as straightforward as grinding up some great nuts and, “Voila! It’s toast time.” At Wise Goat, we’ve nailed down the process of making a few very special nut butters to be one of your favorite pantry staples. Whether it’s for our hazelnut butter or lion’s mane butter, all our nuts go through the same standard pre-packaging process to give you the most nutritional value. We call that process “sprouting and soaking.”
When nuts grow on a plant, they’re covered with a coating of natural chemicals which protects them from predators and from sprouting prematurely. Nature always has our back! This protectant coating is made up of high levels of phytic acid which, unfortunately, our bodies can’t break down very well. Once nuts and seeds are harvested from their mother plant, they don’t lose this layer, so it’s up to us to remove it. Soaking seeds in warm water for multiple days allows them to sprout which increases their enzyme action and thus enhances their “nutrient bioavailability.” That’s just a fancy way of saying that our body has an easier time accessing and breaking down all the good stuff inside nuts. When foods are less “bioavailable,” they are harder to digest and often cause bloating, diarrhea and indigestion issues. Maybe you’ve experienced this before when eating raw nuts. By soaking and sprouting our nuts and seeds, we can ensure that we’re eating a LIVE plant which has greater enzyme activity and is therefore more bioavailable to us. Oh, and it also increases the flavor profile which is obviously an added bonus. So easy to go NUTS about!
