The Spira team has been hitting the gym 🏋️♀️
I’ve learned that I don’t consume enough protein for muscle growth 💪. For my height and weight, I needed to up that to 160-200 grams. When I started looking at how much protein was in my regular foods, I couldn’t believe it. I was regularly consuming ~50 grams of protein. It’s much harder to get protein than I expected. This wasn’t my first time going to the gym, but I never worried about the nutrients I was intaking to be effective.
To solve for this problem, I needed supplements🥤 . I found some plant-based protein powder that got me excited, and started consuming foods high in protein. The problem with the foods I consumed, was the lack a lot of the nutrients I appreciated. It turns out running a microgreens farm is helpful in the nutrient department 😂
Sunflower 🌻 was a really popular product in 2021 at the farmers markets, because it has a full protein built in! A lot plant-based protein is made off of peas. I do love peas for many reasons, but they do not have all of the amino acids to make a full protein.
Did sunflowers get me to 160 grams of protein? Not alone, however, they were part of that picture. Sunflowers contain ~2 grams of protein per 100 grams of sunflower. It’s not much, but I easily consume 300 grams a day, through my meals and in smoothies we love to make. That makes the amount of protein I get out of sunflower equate to….. drumroll please🥁… 1.5 eggs! Wow that isn’t that much 😅.
Protein is hard to come by in plants 🌱, but it’s nice to be able to get some out of them to help me on my journey. Since I have a strong focus on consuming protein to contribute to my goals, I was finding it hard to get nutrition as well. Sunflowers are a nutrition machine, and its other properties are often undervalued.
Reasons to love Sunnies 🌞
Vitamins A / C / B-6 / K
Calcium
Iron
Magnesium
Phosphorus
Potassium
Protein
Zinc
Iodine
Selenium
and many more – check out the source below for the list
I need to eat a lot more than I am accustomed to 🍴. It is a lot harder than I was anticipating. This is the great thing about microgreens. Since they are so packed with nutrition, you do not need to eat as much of the leafy greens to get the nutrition fix needed. It also allows for new and creative ways to fit in as much nutrition into our diets as we can fit in.
Sources:
Sunflower Nutrition