Activated Almonds - What's The Deal?
You may have seen them in your local grocery store, 'activated almonds' often next to the regular almonds and roast almonds... yet commanding multiples times the price of regular almonds.
Vegans, raw food lovers and clean eaters claim activated almonds to be more nutritious, easier to digest and better for your health than regular almonds with contain a series of phytochemicals, preventing your body from receiving the full benefit of the almond unless it's undergone the activation process (which we'll cover in a moment).
Now, whether you believe the activated almonds theory or not, if you'd like to activate your almonds I recommend doing it yourself - the price of activated almonds in the store is crazy as the process to activate your almonds is extremely easy, however does require a bit of unattended time.
Almonds are loaded with nutrients and are relatively high in protein, if you're not snacking on almonds while bulking I highly recommend doing so as it's an easy way to obtain more calories.
Besides the protein factor, here's a number of other reasons why I'm an almond advocate...
Almonds Contain:
- vitamins
- minerals
- fatty acids
- fibre
- Vitamin E
- B vitamins
- calcium
How To Activate Almonds
The process of activating almonds requires us to soak our almonds (or other nuts) for a lengthy period of time - this ranges from 7 - 14 hours, in the case of almonds we're going to be soaking them for 12 - 14 hours.
The soaking process is set to deactivate the enzyme inhibitors, allowing us to get the full benefit of the almonds nutritional values.
Once the almonds have been soaked its time to dry them at a relatively low temperature, this process will give them a similar taste and texture to the traditional roast almond.
Process To Activate Almonds
Ingredients:
- 2 cups raw almonds
- Just enough water to cover your almonds in a bowl
- sea salt, tamari or garlic salt if you'd like to add seasoning
Process:
- Allow your almonds to soak in the bowl for 12 - 14 hours.
- Using a small amount of water give your soaked almonds a good rinse, if you want to add some seasoning now is the time to do it.
- In order to add your seasoning (optional) mix a teaspoon of your desired seasoning into your bowl and stir well.
- Now to dehydrate - use either a food dehydrator if you have one, if not your oven will do the trick on the lowest temperature possible - allow 6 - 24 hours for the dehydration and drying process to complete.
- How do you know when they're ready? Try one - they should feel and taste dry.
