Many of the foods that have a high density of important nutrients are well known and are increasingly a staple of modern diets. Including oats, blueberries, spinach and broccoli. The superfood that often gets overlooked is alfalfa, despite the fact it’s amazingly versatile and easy to use.
The benefits of eating Alfalfa sprouts, leaves and seeds are diverse.
It has been shown to improve digestion, manage blood sugar and potentially improve heart health. As well as being a dietary aid for menopause symptom management and a great source of antioxidants.
Clearly, this is a superfood that now demands its time in the spotlight!
So, we have compiled a complete guide to Alfalfa’s nutritional advantages. As well as ways to include alfalfa in your diet and other handy insights on this plant. Our aim is to help you to optimise its benefits and avoid risks associated with raw alfalfa sprouts past their best.
Facts about Alfalfa
So, what is alfalfa, and what makes it special in dietary terms?
Though it’s a flowering plant in the Legume family, alfalfa is largely to be a herb. In some countries, it is referred to as lucerne and its official Latin name is Medicago sativa.
Alfalfa is very easy and fast to grow. Which is one of the reasons it has been highly valued as a cheap and nutritious way to feed livestock since ancient Roman and Greek times.
Over the years, its medicinal properties have been recognised, leading to the consumption of leaves dried for tea, or alfalfa seeds as a natural health remedy.
Now, the main way to eat Alfalfa is the young sprouts. Plant sprouts are used to germinate from seeds and are packed with nutrients.
Of course, alfalfa is just one example of sprout types commonly used in meal preparation, packed with wonderful nutrition. You may already be using soy and mung bean sprouts, and pea sprouts.
Alfalfa sprouts may be skinny (and not that exciting to look at) but they are a powerhouse of nutrients, and very low in calories. As well as being an easy to digest plant, making them ideal for diverse ages and dietary preferences.
Nutritional value of alfalfa sprouts
Let’s look more closely at the nutritional value of alfalfa.
The benefits of eating alfalfa sprouts include a healthy dose of vitamin K. If you eat a 33gm portion of these sprouts, you would get around 13% of your daily Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI). Vitamin K plays a role in blood clotting and healing of wounds, as well as potentially supporting good bone health.
Alfalfa sprouts also have a significant amount of Vitamin C, A and E, as well as thiamine, riboflavin, magnesium, iron, copper, manganese and folate.
That’s a rather impressive list!
They are also a plant-based source of protein and contain a surprisingly substantial amount of fibre.
We have covered the specific hair health benefits of alfalfa in a separate article some of the nutrients mentioned play a key role in maintaining the appearance, feel and growth of human hair.
For the purposes of this guide to alfalfa nutritional benefits, we will explore some of the other good reasons to include it in your meals or to take alfalfa-based supplements.
Alfalfa as an antioxidant
One of the best nutritional advantages of alfalfa is that it boosts your consumption of antioxidants. Why is that important?
Every day, our bodies come under attack from chemicals known as free radicals – a process called oxidation. Exposure can be from the air you breathe, sunlight or lifestyle choices such as smoking. We even produce them ourselves, as an inevitable part of ageing.
The impact of free radicals is to damage cells and our genetic make-up.
To a degree, our own immune response can fight off these chemicals in all their forms and types. However, an important part of our defence system is to extract additional antioxidants from food. These contribute greatly to our ability to maintain cell health and repair our DNA.
There is a large range of chemical substances that come under the category antioxidants and plenty of choices of foods rich in antioxidant types. However, what you really need to know is that some foods are packed with a potent blend of them, creating a highly effective natural defence system. Like alfalfa!
That last point needs to be emphasised.
Manufacturers of processed foods have jumped on the antioxidant bandwagon, to fortify foods, as the understanding of their importance has grown. It is now a much-touted food benefit!
However, both the medical and alternative health communities are united in promoting the importance of absorbing antioxidants from natural sources. Foods that offer this advantage as well as containing a blend of other highly significant nutritional plus points.
The advantage of using naturally occurring antioxidants, or superfoods, is the ability to avoid other unwelcome additives, preservatives, and sugars. So natural occurring is preferable to fortified foods in many cases.
This is why insights from a naturopath can be vital, as they can point you towards authentically natural sources of these nutrients and other vital nutritional elements, like those found in alfalfa sprouts.
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Bioactive plant compounds
The densely packed vitamins and minerals in alfalfa will be familiar to most people. However, this power-packed superfood also contains something called bioactive plant compounds. This may be a less known nutritional area.
What are bioactive plant compounds?
They are naturally occurring chemicals found in botanic foods, which are the most likely elements to yield important medical breakthroughs as research techniques and equipment advance. For instance, the global medical science community is currently exploring ways to use bioactive compounds to prevent cancer and other diseases.
Though the health-promotion potential of bioactive plant compounds is why some things have been used as medicine since Medieval times!
So, what bioactive plant compounds can be found in alfalfa?
The sprouts are a good source of compounds that include alkaloids, coumarins, flavonoids, phytosterols, phytoestrogens and saponins.
This means they are good for you, but how these substances work in improving human health, requires a great deal more study.
Lowering cholesterol and advantages of eating alfalfa
One health benefit of eating alfalfa that’s already widely acknowledged is that it’s a food that lowers cholesterol.
You probably already know that cholesterol is a fatty substance that can impact your cardiovascular health. The reasons why alfalfa plays a positive role in managing cholesterol is not yet clear but may be attributable to the number of saponins (see above) it contains.
Saponins are widely recognised as a way to lower cholesterol levels, as this compound reduces the rate that cholesterol is absorbed in your gut.
The improvement made by eating saponin-rich alfalfa has been studied in animals. More recently there has been a move towards human trials to show the link between alfalfa and cholesterol management.
More data is needed, but the evidence of this alfalfa health benefit shows great promise!
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Alfalfa’s role in managing blood sugar levels
Are there other health benefits from eating alfalfa?
Again, though nothing is irrevocably proven in human trials – yet – there is strong evidence to suggest alfalfa can improve metabolic health. Making it a good food choice for anyone with diabetes.
Various animal studies have already shown that eating alfalfa can help lower blood sugar levels. As it appears to stimulate natural insulin production. This is an area of research that is also set to advance in the near future, to confirm the metabolic advantages that alfalfa provides.
How can eating alfalfa improve menopause symptoms?
Finding a natural remedy for menopause symptoms can be a significant step forward for countless women. It would appear that including alfalfa sprouts or supplements in your diet may well give you some relief.
That’s because one of the bioactive plant compounds in alfalfa is phytoestrogens.
Importantly, this nutritional value of alfalfa is a bit of a “double-edged sword” for women who want to eat healthily.
This particular natural compound ‘mimics’ the oestrogen hormone women produce. So, it can be argued that eating alfalfa lowers natural production.
This is a good thing if you are finding ways to ease some of the hormonal effects of menopause.
However, this effect of eating alfalfa may not be a good thing for women trying to get pregnant, it is possible that if you regularly include it in your diet you may be decreasing your fertility. Also, if you eat a lot of alfalfa sprouts or supplements, you may interfere with birth control tablets!
Much more detailed clinical research is needed to drill down on all this, and to unlock the potential that phytoestrogens have to balance hormones or to support female health in other ways.
Alfalfa as an aid to digestion
A brief mention has already been made of the substantial fibre found in alfalfa sprouts.
At the risk of repeating ourselves, the health benefits of this form of fibre and ways to optimise it in sprouts warrant additional research.
One such study discovered that the point at which you eat sprouts germinated from grain can affect how much fibre they contain. A five-day-old sprout had up to 133% more fibre than the grain it grew from!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2608636/
Also, as part of this naturally occurring process, the amount of gluten decreases as grains become sprouts. Suggesting alfalfa and other sprouts could be a good option for anyone following a gluten restricted diet.
What is clear, is that eating sprouts – like alfalfa – provides us with an important source of easy to absorb fibre, which can then support good digestion in general.
Ways to include alfalfa sprouts in your diet
Clearly, you could opt to buy supplements containing alfalfa or teas made from this plant’s leaves.
Some people passionate about creating healthy smoothies add alfalfa to their blends, though juicing it on its own is an ‘acquired taste’.
One of the great things about this superfood is that it's really easy to include nutritious, slightly nutty-tasting alfalfa sprouts in many popular meals.
Many fans eat them raw, mixed into a salad. They go really well with shredded carrot and beetroot, for example.
They can also be lightly cooked as an ingredient in healthy stir-fries. Another option is to lightly toast alfalfa sprouts and include them in sandwiches and wraps for a nutritious crunch!
They are a healthy ingredient in many Indian dishes too. As they are so quick to cook, it is recommended you only add them to stews, casseroles and curries for the last couple of minutes of cooking time.
Alfalfa sprouts are a great option for weight-management snacking just on their own, as you can fill up on a low-calorie food that provides a wonderful assortment of nutritional values.
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Using alfalfa and health risks
Alfalfa is clearly a highly advantageous food option that’s easy to absorb, versatile and relatively inexpensive. No wonder it's on the list of superfoods!
However, like everything else you eat, it does have riders attached to it, to avoid potential side effects of eating alfalfa.
The most common question about this foodstuff is: “Is it safe to eat alfalfa sprouts raw?”.
As mentioned above, the answer is yes. However, it's important to refrigerate sprouts (use the crisper compartment) and only use them when they are fresh. If there is any sign of wilting or ‘wetness’ please discard them. Also, check they are clean! Like any raw sprout or vegetable leaf, they can harbour E. coli and Salmonella bacteria.
See the section above on the potential side-effects of eating alfalfa if you are trying to get pregnant. Plus, you need to be aware that boosting your levels of vitamin K can affect the performance of blood thinners (like warfarin). Also, you may experience an increased impact if you are taking medications that increase your sensitivity to the sun’s rays.
Another cautionary note is, as these sprouts are high in fibre eating alfalfa excessively can cause gas, discomfort and diarrhoea in some people.
Lastly, eating much of any good thing can be bad for you. So, consuming a lot of alfalfa may elevate your intake of some vitamins in a way that is not recommended.
Otherwise, alfalfa certainly deserves to sit alongside other superfoods and find its way into meals for anyone who eats healthily.
Additional sources
other interesting reading:
Could Alfalfa be a good way to keep hair healthy?
Mixed Carotenoids Protect Your Skin from Within?
Understanding Your Super-foods.
Could a good daily intake of antioxidants unlock the secret to greater longevity?
Bilberry supplements containing Anthocyanin demonstrated reduce Cardio-metabolic Risk Factors
