Broccoli microgreens, and the 16-gram serving that went through eleven people
Most crops in this library are sold on what sits in the leaf. Broccoli has something rarer, a receipt from inside the body: eleven adults ate one measured 16 gram serving and the compound this plant is famous for was tracked all the way through. The same crop is the wateriest of seventeen measured side by side, and gram for gram the grown crown still beats it on vitamin C. Both halves are on this page.
Broccoli microgreens taste like broccoli with the volume turned down. Mild, green, a whisper of the family’s pepper, none of the sulfur punch of the cooked crown. They are also the one microgreen with human evidence behind the famous compound: a measured 16 gram serving carried a steady dose of glucoraphanin, and a 2023 study tracked it through eleven people who ate it.
Say this one at the stall. Everything below it is the proof, for when they ask.
What the research measured
Figures below are from published work on broccoli microgreens specifically, not on microgreens as a category. Broccoli is one of the few crops where a comparison with the grown plant is even fair to raise, and where it is raised here, a study actually made it. Mineral absolutes move hard with the growing system, so every row carries its ranking and its conditions together.
Every row is tied to a numbered source, and the numbered list is in the guide and in the research post linked below. No figure appears here without one.
Conditions. The yield, sulfur and dry matter rows are one seventeen-species trial: no cultivar named, seed from Johnny’s, BioStrate felt mats under Florida greenhouse daylight with no micronutrient feed, cut eleven days after sowing. The glucoraphanin row is the ‘EM’ variety grown by 80 Acres Farms in Ohio, harvested at ten days and measured one and six days later. Where a study named no cultivar, that is said rather than papered over.
What this does not show
No human trial has fed broccoli microgreens and measured a health outcome. The blood-sugar and weight-loss studies people quote were done in mice.
The one human study is an absorption study: eleven adults, one 16 gram serving, the compound’s metabolites counted on their way out of the body. Everything else health-shaped in this crop’s literature happened in mice or in cells in a dish, and the biggest glucosinolate figures in circulation trace back to sprout studies even when a paper files them under microgreens. Three relevant papers could not be opened at all, including the only glucosinolate profile of broccoli microgreens, so the guide names them rather than quoting them.
Composition moves with the growing system, and on this crop it moves further than any in the library so far: iron came out at 336, 670 and 2,610 micrograms per 100 grams in three trials under three systems, an eightfold spread on one nutrient. That is why the rows above carry rankings with their conditions rather than promises. The portion math gets said out loud too. At a 20 gram handful, the vitamin C lands at 11 to 18 per cent of the Daily Value across the three labs that measured it, a good source rather than a high-in, and still behind the same 20 grams of the grown crown. The full accounting, statistical letters and all, is in the guide.
What your customer will ask
The part you cannot get from a nutrition database. Six questions that come up at a stall or a restaurant door, what you must not say, and one answer written out in full so you can see what the other five look like.
1“Why is it so expensive for such a small bag?”
Built on ten days of hand work per tray, what a fast turn actually costs, and being cut days before it is sold rather than weeks.
Never measure the price against medicine or supplements, and never justify it with a health outcome. Price is about labour and freshness, not about what the food is supposed to do for somebody.
2“What are they actually good for?”
Built on the taste, the fast kitchen uses, the family’s sulfur signature measured fourth of seventeen, and the measured record in the guide.
Never lead with vitamin C. In all three labs that measured it, the grown crown carries more, gram for gram. And never say “more nutritious than broccoli” as a blanket: the honest sentence is nutrient by nutrient, trial by trial, and the guide carries it.
3“How do I use them so they do not die in my fridge?”
Built on eating them raw and finishing with them rather than cooking them, and on giving the customer one concrete first use for the whole bag.
Never quote a shelf life you have not tested yourself, in your own packaging, in a fridge like the one your customer owns. A published storage figure from another farm’s trial is not a promise you can make.
4“Are they safe? I heard something about sprouts making people sick.”
Built on the real differences between how sprouts and microgreens are grown and what is eaten, and on saying what you do rather than what cannot happen.
Never say your product cannot be contaminated, and never wave the sprout outbreaks away as somebody else’s problem. Say what you do: grown in light on clean media, cut above the tray, seed coats shed, kept cold. Care, not immunity.
5“I read these help with blood sugar. Is that true?”
Built on the honest gap between a measured vegetable and a treatment, and on what the one human study actually measured, which is absorption, not benefit.
Never cite the weight-loss or blood-sugar studies as a reason to buy. Both were done in mice, one with juice by gavage and one with freeze-dried powder, and nothing has fed broccoli microgreens to a person and measured a health outcome. “Helps with blood sugar” is a drug claim on a food, and it is the same line in every market you will ever sell in.
“Are these the same as broccoli sprouts? I heard the sprouts are the special ones.”
Close cousins, not the same product. A sprout is eaten at three to five days, seed and all, grown in the dark. These grew in light for about ten days and were cut above the tray, so you are eating leaf and stem, no seed. The famous multiplier figures come from sprout studies comparing sprouts against grown broccoli heads, and they get pasted onto microgreens all the time. I do not borrow them. What I can tell you is measured: a 2023 study fed eleven healthy adults one 16 gram serving of fresh broccoli microgreens. The serving carried about 13 micromoles of glucoraphanin per gram, a level that study calls similar in range to broccoli sprouts. It held that level through six days in a fridge. And the compound’s markers showed up in every one of the eleven afterwards. So no, not the same as sprouts. Measured on their own terms, and they held their own.
Never quote a sprout multiplier for a microgreen, and never quote any multiplier without the table it came from. Absorption is not a benefit: the human study tracked where the compound went, it did not measure a health outcome, so no sentence may promise one.
Figures on this page describe what has been measured in the plant. Nothing here is a claim that any food treats, prevents, eases or cures any condition. This information is educational and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.
Answer the sprout question, and every other one, without guessing
Everything above stays on this page. The guide is the same evidence written to be handed across a stall, with all six answers filled in.
Every figure is traced to a table in the source paper. Not an abstract, not a summary, the table. Find one that is not and I will correct it and reissue the guide.
When the research moves, you get the new version. That is the part a flyer you write yourself cannot do. Yours goes out of date the day you print it. This one does not.
- The brandable guideTwelve pages with your farm name and logo on the front, so it reads as your material. The health language and the citations are locked, so a claim you did not write cannot drift into one you cannot defend.
- Three stall sheets, your name on themPrice, keeping and chef. Print them, pin one to the stall, hand the others across. Same three in a personal edition if you only want them for yourself.
- All six answers, written outIncluding the one every broccoli grower gets weekly: are these the same as sprouts? On this page you get that one. In the guide you get the wording for all six.
- The whole measured recordThis page shows four findings. The guide carries every published value with its statistical letters, as a table you can hand to a chef who asks for the numbers.
- The license, and the reissue promiseEvery figure traced to a published table. Find one that is not and the corrected guide goes to every buyer at no extra cost. When the research moves, the new edition follows.
$47, one time, and it is yours. These are digital files, delivered in minutes, and all sales are final.
- Your farm name and logo on the front, so it reads as your material and not somebody else’s
- All six answers written out, the sprout question included, in the words to use at a stall rather than the words a journal uses
- Health language and citations locked, so a claim you did not write cannot drift into one you cannot defend
- Ten minutes from download to handing the first one across
Just eating them, not selling? Personal edition, $7
The same three sheets, Microgreens World branded. Read them, print them, keep them on the fridge. No right to put them in front of customers.
Every figure on this page rests on one of 11 peer-reviewed sources, 2016 to 2025. The full list, with journals and direct links, is in the guide and in the research post linked below.
Superscript markers through this page show which claim rests on which source. The full reference list is in the guide and in the research post linked below.
