i can eat alot of buckwheat sprouts! how much is too much? Cousens said you can eat too much of these in 1 of his books, but he didn't state quantities.

isnt buckwheat poisonous when it is raw? i read that somewhere... you may want to look into it so you arent hurting yourself in the long run.

don't know about the limit, but I doubt it's straight-out poisonous, since a lot of raw companies use it, for gRAWnola and raw bars and such.

you are most likely right, but there is no harm in caution!

read this and decide for yourself: [www.gillesarbour.com]

Hmm, it says the sprouts but not the groats are toxic. I'm a little confused, I wonder what it is in the granolas and bars. Sprouted groats?

Are the groats these: [www.mannaharvest.net]?

I bought a bag at my natural grocers, then right before I was about to soak them, read about their being poisionous... Do you think it is possible the groats arent? I hope so because I bought a lot.

It said the groats weren't just the sprouts.

Thank god! lol thanks so much for looking into this with me

buckwheat greens and buckwheat sprouts are 2 differents products.

What is the difference?

one is a leafy green the other is a sprouted seed.

I'm currently recuperating from fagopyrism -- which is the fancy name for eating so many buckwheat greens that you have to stay indoors all the time (and out of the sunlight, even there) like a vampire or else your skin will turn all rough and pink and itch till it drives you crazy. Took me a few months to figure out what was doing it -- like Gilles Arbour (see link in rawvnessa9's second post above), I was tested for lupus (and also Lyme disease) before finally figuring it out for myself with the help of Google. As Gilles says, it may be difficult to chew enough buckwheat greens to do yourself any harm, but I was eating up to a pound a day in green smoothies!

As rosemary points out, buckwheat sprouts are not the same thing as buckwheat greens. The greens are typically grown to a height of six inches or so in trays of soil, the same way that wheatgrass is grown. The sprouts are typically grown only until each groat has a little tail about as long as the diameter of the groat itself. BUT these two things are merely different points on a continuum. If you put the sprouts in sunlight and allow them to keep growing, they will eventually become greens (though they'd probably be healthier in soil). It's apparently the green parts that can be toxic. I emailed Gilles asking whether minimally-sprouted groats might be at all toxic, and he suggested that I avoid exposing them to light as much as possible (sprout them in a cupboard, say). This may be playing it far safer than necessary, but after what I've been through, it sounds like easy insurance!

The big as-yet-unanswered question seems to be, are buckwheat greens toxic for everybody? My best guess would be yes, but everyone has a different threshold, so I would advise anyone who intends to start eating buckwheat greens to introduce them gradually into their diet. If you notice any odd sensations (e.g., itching, tingling, numbness, or redness) in areas of skin that have been exposed to the sun, lay off the buckwheat greens for a month or so (yes, it can take that long) and see if the problem goes away (then, if you want to be really sure, reintroduce the buckwheat greens and see if the problem returns). In my experience, a couple of particularly suspicious symptoms are 1) skin that turns pink or red after being exposed to direct sunlight through glass (the glass blocks UV light, so it can't be a normal sunburn), and/or 2) you accidentally bump your hand slightly and it hurts like crazy for a few minutes.

Thanks so much, everyone, for chiming in on this subject--I had no idea about the relative toxicity of raw buckwheat, but feel very well-informed now. Whew! Lucky escape!

Thank you for this discussion. I went to [www.gillesarbour.com] and read his article on buckwheat greens and it is frightening. He says the seed, or grouts, don't cause the problem. Carol, thank god you were able to diagnose yourself. It is testimony to 'everything in moderation'.

I can't find grouts around here, not even at our health food store or Whole Foods, so am getting them from Barry Farm. I want to use them in pizza crust; mmmveg has a pizza recipe on the recipe forum that looks fabulous and calls for the grouts in the crust.

Suzie

Some places do carry buckwheat groats, but just call them buckwheat. If it's a little triangular putty-colored dry thing, that's a groat. The only question then is, is it raw? If it's been toasted, they'll usually say so on the label. Or if it's in a bulk bin, you can smell it -- raw will have very little odor, whereas toasted will smell sort of like coffee. You can tell for sure if they're raw (and fresh) by trying to sprout them.

My favorite mail-order source for raw buckwheat groats is Jaffe Bros. in California ( [www.organicfruitsandnuts.com] ).

Once I'm over this, I would have no qualms about eating buckwheat greens that someone else served me once in a while, especially in a salad. Next time I'm spending a couple of weeks at a raw facility, though, I will probably go easy on the blended or juiced buckwheat greens, because it's so easy to ingest large quantities of them in that form. And I doubt very much whether I would ever grow them myself again. There are so many other greens to choose from that I don't really see the point of experimenting on myself.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2009 06:05PM by Carol the Dabbler.

4 handfull green sprouts/day for 2 weeks made me into a fagopyrism.

Thanks for your input, Healthybun! You're the first person I've "met" who also suffered from fagopyrism. Are you OK now? How long did it take for your symptoms to clear up?

In 2005 I got my first course in the AnnW-way of doing things and drank alot of liters with the energysoup. 2 big handfull buckwheatsprouts and alot of other stuff, for 1 litre of soup. 2 times a day and even sometimes for breakfast.

The first symtoms was "sun-itching" on the nose. Like a spiderweb was there and tingeling all the time, and it got worser when scratching.

I was out in the sun for 15 minutes and looked like a cooked lobster. Totally red!

It took me 2 week without the sprouts to get the fagopyrism out of the skin. Such a releaf. And I noticed also that only eating the sprouts whole, not in soups and juices, I didn't get it back. But as soon as I drank the soup in the extreme quantites again, I got my lobsterskin back.

That's a perfect description of the early symptoms! I'm so happy for you, getting over it in only two weeks! I've heard that it takes some people a month or two. Did it take you a while to figure out what was causing your "lobster skin" the first time? And were you continuing to eat the buckwheat sprouts/greens during all of that time?

By the way, When you say green buckwheat sprouts, do you mean little curly sprouts from a jar, or 15-cm-tall baby plants from a tray of soil? (Some people call the baby plants "buckwheat greens" or "buckwheat lettuce," to distinguish them from the little curly sprouts.)

I was eating buckwheat greens for a couple of months before I realized they were causing my mysterious problem, and stopped eating them three weeks ago. My symptoms are a little better now (my skin isn't as rough, and I don't feel excruciating pain if I accidentally bump my hand a little bit), but my skin is still *very* sensitive to sunlight, even through a window. I'm wondering whether this is because I was also taking St. Johnswort (a medicinal herb that can cause a similar type of photosensitivity). I just stopped taking that a week and a half ago, so I will presumably be a lot better within another six or seven weeks, hopefully less!

I was 100% raw at that time so that might have decreased the time to get symtom free.

I meant buckwheat greens. =)

I was really lost when I got red the first time and got annoyed that I couldn't be out in the sun anymore. But it was just some weeks until it passed away. A friend got the same symtoms and researched and sent me the answer in the late 2005.

Just skip the buckwheat greens and go with sunflower greens, they are great! I managed to get almost symtomfree with less soup and more sunflower greens.

Good luck!

I've actually been 100% raw for just over a year now, but didn't start growing the buckwheat greens till about three months ago.

You're fortunate to have realized immediately that the sun was a factor. I think one reason that my symptoms are taking this much time to go away is that I didn't realize that for a couple of months, so I kept going outdoors. (I didn't turn red, just got a pins-and-needles feeling in my lower lip and that spider-web feeling in my nose and cheeks.) It got to the point where my face and later my hands and arms were itching like crazy, especially when I would absent-mindedly scratch at them!

The itching is much less now, but that may be mostly because I finally realized that sunlight was part of the problem, and have stayed indoors for the past couple of weeks. I am getting tired of living like Dracula, but I'll do whatever it takes to get my life back.

And yes, I love sunflower greens, plus they are much easier to grow than buckwheat greens. I want to get better soil to grow them in, and then will go back to growing them and wheatgrass.