You may have noticed that many books on raw food suggest that you soak nuts and seeds before using them, and there is a good reason for that. Nuts and seeds play important roles in a plant-based diet, especially one focusing on raw foods, but to take full advantage of the nutrients and healthy oils they offer us, they should be properly prepared.
The first step is to make sure your nuts and seeds are raw, as cooking nuts and seeds denigrates them nutritionally and damages the delicate oils they contain. Avoid roasting them especially, as this promotes oxidation of fragile, beneficial oils and can cause the formation of unhealthy new compounds, including trans fats.1
Once you have your raw nuts and seeds, soaking them for at least a few hours or ideally overnight in warm, distilled water with a small amount of sea salt helps to maximize their benefits and makes them easier to digest and assimilate. That’s because raw nuts and seeds contain moderate levels of phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors, by clever natural design.
Phytic acid is biologically necessary for the plant, as it helps safeguard the nut or seed until proper growing conditions are present and the seed can germinate. These enzyme inhibitors prevent the seed from sprouting prematurely, but they can be difficult for the body to assimilate, and may cause digestive system irritation for some people. Soaking your nuts in warm water helps to neutralize enzyme inhibitors and increase the bioavailability of many nutrients the nuts and seeds contain.
While the added Pink Himalayan salt is optional, it appears to help deactivate the enzyme inhibitors present in nuts. Soaking nuts and seeds in water with salt is actually an age-old practice. For example, the Aztec Indians, who relied heavily on pumpkin seeds in their diet, soaked them in sea water and sun dried them to maximize their flavor and nutritional value.
Since one of the goals of the raw food approach is to improve the health and efficiency of your digestives stem, this soaking process is important. It is especially helpful for young children who are still developing the enzymes to break down certain plant foods, or older people who have trouble with digestion.
Another reason to soak nuts and seeds in the context of raw food cuisine is that it softens them. This results in sumptuously smooth milks, and deliciously creamy sauces, dressings, and dips. That doesn’t mean you have to snack on soft nuts, however. You can easily dehydrate them after soaking for a crunchy, highly nutritious, protein-rich, easily assimilated snack.
1 J Agric Food Chem. 2008 Aug 27;56(16):7082-90. doi: 10.1021/jf800808d. Epub 2008 Aug 5.