Why would anyone want to "sprout" food? Isn't that the reason we keep things in the fridge, to prevent sprouting? Turns out, with tree nuts, as with grains, "sprouting" makes a wonderful difference.
In this quick video, I explain the sprouting process at the dehydration section of the Rich Nuts production facility in Los Angeles, check it out:
By germinating nuts through a controlled process of hydration (aka imbibition) and then halting the germination process at a precise point with dehydration, nuts become what we call sprouted.
The gentle dehydration used to halt germination is done just before a nut would begin the next phase of putting out a shoot, which normally would eventually become a new tree. Instead, by halting the germination process at just the right time, the nut is transformed from a protected "seed" into a delightfully crunchy, easily digested, concentrated and shelf-stable health food.
As they say, nuts are nature's concentrated food energy. With sprouting, they get even better for you.