Wheat sprouts: a functional and healthy food

Bioactive components such as vitamins, poliphenols, carotenoids etc, are present in all plants and have been extensively studied in vegetables and fruits, tea, olive oil, legumes, nuts, red wine, sprouts. From many years, our research group, is studying the properties of cereal sprouts with particular attention to wheat sprouts. When the sprouts are used as food, the life force is released and supplies the energy which is capable of generating healthy cells in the body and supplying us with new vigor and life. Wheat sprouts contain a very high level of organic phosphates and a powerful cocktail of antioxidant molecules. Catalase and peroxidase activity appears very strong. Regarding low-molecular weight antioxidant molecules, we have demonstrated the presence of several classes of antioxidant compounds such as reducing glycosides, polyphenols and, overall antioxidant bioavailable peptides. In these years we demonstrated that these extracts present, a high antioxidant activity (1), the ability to protect DNA against the oxidative stress induced by Fenton reaction (2), an anti-aging activity (3), and induce apoptosis in human cancer cells (4). The most recent results demonstrate that hydroalcolic wheat sprout extract is able to induce an autophagic process in HeLa cells that could be related also to tumor cell growth inhibition and antiaging activity.