Sprouting

When a seed, grain, or nut germinates, whether visibly or not, the plant produces three enzymes that mimic phytic acid's action on mineral absorption. Aajonus stated that these three enzymes act proportionally more aggressively than the original phytic acid alone, making the total anti-nutritional load in a sprout greater than in the unsprouted seed. He described the effect as "three times the amount of phytic acid activity" rather than an improvement. Because mineral absorption is blocked, and because those minerals are required for the body to break down and assimilate protein, the chain of impairment runs from minerals through protein digestion to fat digestion, leaving the person who eats large amounts of sprouts progressively deficient across multiple nutritional pathways simultaneously.

Aajonus was consistent across many different talks that the number of replacement enzymes is three, and that each one independently replicates the phytic acid blockade. He did not identify the enzymes by name in the sources, but he repeated the mechanism in essentially identical terms across multiple seminars, treating it as an established biochemical fact he had researched and confirmed.

The most direct piece of evidence Aajonus returned to repeatedly was the effect of an exclusive sprout diet on birds. Birds were his chosen comparison because birds, specifically grain-eating birds with gizzards, represent the animal most biologically prepared to process seeds, grains, and their germinated forms. A bird's gizzard is a specialized grinding organ designed to mechanically break down grains and seeds. If any animal could tolerate sprouts as a primary food, it would be a grain-eating bird with this specialized digestive hardware.

His claim was that when a bird is fed only sprouts with no other food, it dies. The timeframe he gave varied slightly across different talks. In some passages he said two days, in others three to four days, in one passage five days, and in another "three to four days." He also noted in one passage that "its spinal cord starts dissolving, its bones start dissolving, and it will die." The specific timing in each talk should be understood as Aajonus giving a consistent general range rather than a precise single figure, but all versions point to rapid death within days. In every version of the account, the mechanism is the same: the enzyme load in the sprouts prevents the bird from digesting protein. The protein cannot be used. Structural tissues including spinal cord and bone begin to break down because the body cannot obtain or use what it needs from the food. The bird essentially starves of protein while eating.

He made the point explicitly that this is remarkable because grain-eating birds are the animals most suited to processing these foods. "Grains are for the birds," he said in one seminar, meaning that birds are biologically built to eat grains in a way that humans are not, and yet even they cannot survive on sprouts. The gizzard provides no advantage when the enzymatic blockade on mineral and protein absorption is operative. If birds with gizzards cannot live on sprouts, the argument that humans can extract significant protein or nutrition from sprouts has no biological basis.

Aajonus made a specific point about when sprouting actually begins relative to visible signs. He said that the sprouting process starts within ten hours of soaking a seed or grain, before any visible protrusion or growth can be seen. The fact that a seed does not yet show a sprout emerging from its surface does not mean the germination process has not already begun internally. Once soaking starts, the enzymatic changes begin to occur within hours. This is relevant because someone eating soaked but not yet visibly sprouted grains or seeds might believe they are still consuming the ungerminated food, when in fact the enzymatic transformation is already underway.

In one passage, Aajonus noted that pigs can tolerate sprouts to some extent if sprouts are mixed with milk or sour milk products. He immediately qualified this by stating that feeding only sprouts to a pig, or to any animal, would kill it. The point was not that pigs are tolerant of sprouts as a food but that the dampening of the anti-nutritional enzymes through mixing with dairy fat allows pigs to consume some sprouts without immediate collapse. He did not develop this into a protocol for human use. The implication is that the fat and protein in milk or sour milk does something to offset the enzyme activity, but he did not elaborate on the mechanism in these sources.

In one consultation, when a person mentioned juicing alfalfa sprouts as part of their regular routine, Aajonus said that alfalfa sprouts contain "an enzyme inhibitor" and that too much would be harmful. His specific guidance in that context was that one day per week was probably the maximum that could be handled, limited to no more than one small package, and that the sprout juice should not be spread across multiple days or mixed into a multi-day supply. This is consistent with his general position but represents the only instance in these sources where he gave a specific limited-use allowance for a sprout product, and it came with strong cautions about quantity and frequency.

In one passage, Aajonus allowed that sprouts might be consumed in very small amounts as a form of medicine. His words were: "Sprouts are not good except in small amounts. Very, very tiny amounts as a medicine, and that's it." He did not specify what medicinal application he had in mind or what condition sprouts might address in that context. He did suggest elsewhere that if a person were going to eat sprouts despite the problems, the quantity should be very modest, offering "maybe once a month a cup" or "a few tablespoons a couple of times a week" as an outer boundary, not a recommendation.

When asked directly about sprouted wheat berries for use in recipes, Aajonus dismissed them on an additional practical ground beyond the enzyme issue: he said they turn rancid immediately. Even if germinated, sprouted wheat berries would oxidize and become rancid right away, making them unsuitable from a freshness standpoint as well as from the enzymatic standpoint he described elsewhere.

Aajonus connected his position on sprouts to his own history as a raw food vegetarian. Before he began eating raw animal foods, he ate germinated grains three or four times a day. He described this period as ending in severe deterioration. He lost weight down to 96 pounds and, in his words, was "dying again." He had been a vegetarian for six and a half years at that stage and attributed much of the damage to the anti-nutritional load he had been consuming, including from germinated grains and sprouts. He stated that he was "damaged" by the pro-sprouting information he believed at the time and had to investigate the underlying chemistry himself to understand what had gone wrong.

He also described one client who had constant digestive problems and was eating germinated grains, specifically a mixture of basmati rice, short sweet rice, rye, and a raw egg added after germination overnight. While this was something Aajonus had at one point guided this client through, the broader context of his teaching was that germinated grains were not a solution to the digestive problems of vegetarians. The combination of phytic acid replacement enzymes, the inability of human digestion to process grains regardless of preparation method, and the rapid rancidification of sprouted materials all worked against germinated grains as a viable food source.

Aajonus described a different approach to the problem of phytic acid in nuts, seeds, and grains for those who wanted to use these foods. Rather than germinating them, he found that grinding nuts into flour and combining them with raw eggs, raw butter, and a small amount of honey would neutralize the phytic acid in the nuts without triggering the production of the replacement enzymes. This is because the combination of fat from the egg and butter and the enzymes in raw honey addresses the mineral-binding activity of phytic acid directly, without initiating germination. He framed this as the solution that vegetarians who wanted to use nuts for starch or caloric purposes could employ, in contrast to sprouting which introduces three times the original problem.

He also mentioned that kefir grains made from grains exist but noted that grain-based kefir fermentation is "not a good one," keeping with his general position that grains in any form, including fermented preparations, do not represent a sound food choice for humans.

In his book "The Recipe for Living Without Disease," Aajonus classified sprouted grains as vegetables, not as a separate category of superior food. His position there was that humans do not digest vegetables well even under the best circumstances, that germinated seeds contain enzyme suppressors preventing proper protein digestion and assimilation, and that this causes protein deficiency. The classification as vegetables was partly to make the point that even if sprouted grains were treated as the best possible form of vegetable food, the fundamental problem of human digestive anatomy still prevents adequate nutrition from vegetable sources, and the enzyme suppressor problem compounds that limitation.

In a note recorded separately, Aajonus was asked about chickens raised on a sprout-based diet and stated plainly: "It's a vegetarian diet and not that great. Animals that live on sprouts die young." This confirmed that his position applied across different animal species, not just to cage birds in controlled experiments. Chickens raised on sprouts as their primary food would have shortened lives due to the same protein digestion impairment he described in all other contexts.