Sulforaphane delivers gut health, addresses damaging inflammation, and detoxification against the 80k+ toxins we are exposed to – but which source is best?
Sulforaphane sources: cruciferous vegetables
In nature, the place to find sulforaphane is in cruciferous vegetables – mature broccoli, broccoli sprouts, cauliflower and a few others that you may recognize in your produce aisle. While these vegetables may have the advantage of being easy to pick up at the grocery store, they aren’t necessarily the best option for delivering effective amounts of sulforaphane.
First, mature broccoli
You’d need to eat about 10 pounds of this vegetable order to hit the 10-15 mg daily sulforaphane target recommended by experts.
No matter how you (literally) slice it, mature broccoli just isn’t the most efficient source of sulforaphane. Studies have actually shown that finely chopped or blended broccoli does yield a slightly higher amount of sulforaphane than whole florets do (a fact that makes sense if you’re familiar with the restorative role that sulforaphane plays in nature). You can take this strategy a couple steps further by allowing the chopped broccoli to rest for 30-45 minutes and adding myrosinase source like mustard seeds. Learn more about how sulforaphane is made. And finally, the broccoli would need to be raw as cooking it destroys sulforaphane. But who has time (and the digestive tract) for all that?
Broccoli sprouts are better – but not perfect
Not interested in the lengthy prep work and long wait time only to miss your sulforaphane target anyway? Broccoli sprouts are a much better choice, but they’re not without their flaws.
Broccoli sprouts yield 50-100x more sulforaphane than mature broccoli. That’s a big deal, but thanks to varying soil qualities and inconsistent farming practices, the sulforaphane content of the sprouts in your local grocery store can have a 20-fold variance. This means you’ll never know if you’re hitting your sulforaphane targets – but that’s actually not the worst part. Sprouts can carry some health risks when not cultivated in a tightly controlled environment.
The warm, humid conditions that broccoli sprouts prefer are also perfect for bacterial growth. It’s not uncommon for broccoli sprouts to play host to harmful pathogens like e.coli and salmonella.
Broc Shot a truly reliable source of sulforaphane
Broc Shot delivers the benefits of pure broccoli sprout sulforaphane without the drawbacks. We’re different, here’s why.
1. Seed selection
Our process begins at seed selection. The seeds we use are a higher yield of sulforaphane than seeds a person could buy at a store or typically grow at home. We have a selective process that includes tests done at the seed level to help yield a consistent amount of at least 15mg of sulforaphane. There is a 20-fold variation in the bioactives in the seed and therefore a consumer can’t easily know the quality of the seed they are purchasing – nor will a supplier without testing them.
We are able obtain 15 mg SFN from approximately 12-15 grams of our fresh sprouts, being that they are the highest quality/yield seed. For reference to ingest 15mg of SFN from grocery store / or homegrown sprout, you would likely need to eat about 200-400 grams of sprouts.
2. Sprouting and cultivation
We grow our sprouts to 3 days old, dry and mill them to make our broccoli sprout powder. While freeze-drying is considered by many to be the superior drying process for plant materials, for enzyme-based plants, it is destructive and so it is not appropriate for cruciferous plants. Our sprouts are NON-GMO and grown hydroponically, a process that combines hydroponic + pesticide/herbicide-free cultivation systems. We don't use any agricultural / environmental chemical pesticides or herbicide residues at any stage of our process.
3. Testing
We test internally at multiple points during growing and manufacturing, including testing at seed level to determine which seeds will yield a strong sulforaphane level as well as third-party testing each final batch to confirm it yields no less than (NLT) 15mg of sulforaphane. We also test for chemical residue + heavy metal contamination, as well as to assess the microbiological profile. No product is released unless it passes our strict standards.