I’ve been feeding my father grain soaking water/whey between meals, so he gets the benefit of the phytic acid without loss of nutrients. In the summer, the soaking makes a pleasantly tart cooling drink. Think about old-fashioned barley water. Not sure what I’ll do now that it is getting cold.

Love this site! Has all the info I’ve been looking for. I’m quite new to the “nutritious ways,” and learning about the best way to eat is taking time. Finding out that refined grains are nutritionally-empty, I have been banishing white bread/rice and eating organic whole grains only.
I’ve also been mixing raw muesli (oats, wheat, and barley flakes, nuts and raisins) with yogurt every morning and adding chopped fresh fruit – delicious! Reading your post, I’ll try soaking my muesli tonight. Will mixing it with plain yogurt and leaving overnight in the fridge do the trick? Or do we need room temp?
Also, have you seen this article: http://www.soilandhealth.org/06clipfile/MuesliSml.pdf
It states that “virtually all oats are steamed or toasted as part of the rolling, grinding, or milling process”, which destroys the phytase we are trying to activate by soaking. Is soaking at all helpful then, without the phytase?
Thanks!!

Question: If I want to use chickpea flour in a flatbread recipe, should I soak the chickpeas and then grind them into flour or just soak the flour????? I’m not thrilled at the prospect of drying the beans out in the oven all day, so I’m more inclined to soak the flour, but I’d love your opinion as to whether the chickpeas even need to be soaked… thanks!

Glad to have you here! You should get an confirmation email soon. Let me know if it doesn’t come.

Also, some friends have asked me if soaking my grains will do anything negative to the FIBER in the whole grains. This was at Wikipedia: “Fiber does not bind to minerals and vitamins and therefore does not restrict their absorption, but rather evidence exists that fermentable fiber sources improve absorption of minerals, especially calcium.[49][50] Some plant foods can reduce the absorption of minerals and vitamins like calcium, zinc, vitamin C and magnesium, but this is caused by the presence of phytate (which is also thought to have important health benefits), not by fiber.[6]” I don’t know if that says anything about soaking and fiber…what do you think?

We get water from a similar machine, so I know that you are talking about. Since the point is to actually make the water acidic when you add in the other different elements, I am assuming that soaking in slightly acidic water from you machine would work just as well. Otherwise, you can just make sure to soak for extra long.

If you would rather not cook your grains in the acidic water, you can drain and rinse them as well before cooking (just cook in ph neutral water). Hope that helps!

Thank you!!!