Pea microgreens, and the flavor score ninety-nine tasters put at the top
Ninety-nine people in Colorado tasted six microgreens side by side. Pea shoots took the highest average score for flavor and for liking overall, sharing the top group with broccoli and red cabbage on both. The same tasters gave their looks the lowest average score of the six, tied with arugula. And on a lab antioxidant test in Türkiye, pea came last of six.
Pea microgreens taste like a garden pea picked young: green and grassy, with a light sweetness and no heat to speak of. In a Colorado panel, ninety-nine tasters gave them the best average flavor score of six microgreens, in a top group with broccoli and red cabbage. And less of each shoot is water: in the survey that started this field, pea tendrils carried more solid matter than any of twenty-five microgreens.
That is the line for the stall. The rest of this page is the proof, for the customer who asks.
What the research measured
Figures below come from studies of pea shoots themselves, not of microgreens as a category, and the conditions under the table name what each trial grew. FoodData Central has no record for pea shoots at all. The pea record that gets copied onto microgreen pages is the edible pod, a different part of the plant, so nothing on this page compares shoots with grown peas.
Every row is tied to a numbered source, and the numbered list is in the guide. No figure appears here without one.
Conditions. The taste scores are organic tendril pea from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, grown on coir under LEDs at Colorado State University and cut at ten days; the paper named no cultivar. The Sri Lankan panel tasted shoots from shop-bought seed of unknown variety, grown on compost and coir in an incubator at 25°C (77°F). The dry matter record and the light and dark pair are pea tendrils from Sun Grown Organics in San Diego, bought in the summer of 2011. They grew in soil in an unheated greenhouse, and the paper gives no cultivar or harvest day. The Polish figures are green pea microgreens bought from a shop in February 2019, variety unknown. The Italian trial grew pea on pads in a greenhouse near Bari, no cultivar given. The Thai figures are seven-day shoots on peat moss, four days in the dark and three under fluorescent light, no cultivar given. The Portuguese figure is one commercial lot from one producer in Odemira, washed, cut and packed, cultivar not stated. The Latvian and UK figures are single retail samples, each analysed once. The DPPH result comes from a growth chamber in Türkiye, on a peat medium with a dilute feed, no cultivar given. The light result is cv. ‘Dwarf Grey Sugar’ on mesh trays over a fed solution, under LEDs alone, at Penn State. The fourteen-dataset range for dry matter adds nine growing trials to the five sources above, grown on peat mixes, compost, jute mats and hydroponic trays. Saying so is part of the figure.
What this does not show
Not one study I could find has fed pea shoots to a person, or even to a mouse.
Everything in the table describes what sits in the plant. None of it tells you what the plant does in a body. The only people in this crop’s research who put pea shoots in their mouths were tasters, a hundred and forty-nine of them across two panels, and what they scored was taste. Thirty-nine sources were opened past the abstract for this page, and the guide carries the measured record.And nothing here is a claim about what the food does for a person. The only words this page has for a health outcome are the ones that tell you not to promise one.
Composition moves with the growing system, and on pea it moves a long way. Vitamin C ran from 31.1 to 153.94 milligrams per 100 grams across five labs, and ranked anywhere from first of five to thirteenth of twenty-five. Nitrate went from not detected, on peat with a dilute feed and no detection limit stated, to 656 milligrams per kilogram on fed trays. The only vitamin K figure, 3.1 micrograms per gram, is one grower in one summer, and the same seed grown in the dark read 0.7. That is why the table carries its conditions, and why no multiplier appears on this page. The rest of the accounting is in the guide.
What your customer will ask
The part a nutrition database will never hand you. Six questions come up at a stall or a kitchen door, and each one carries a line you must not cross. One answer is written out in full, so you can see what the other five look like.
1“Why does a little bag of pea shoots cost so much?”
Built on what a pea tray takes in seed and in days before it is cut, and on the cold chain between the cut and the plate.
Never set the price against a supplement, a protein powder or a health outcome. Price is what the tray cost you to grow and keep cold. The moment it is about what the food does for somebody, it is a drug claim with a price tag on it.
2“What are pea shoots actually good for?”
Built on the taste two panels scored, on the solid matter that put pea first in two surveys, and on the honest line about where the lab tests put it.
Never say they treat, prevent, cure, ease or help with any condition. That sentence is the line between a food and a drug. Never call them antioxidant-rich either. Three of four multi-species panels put pea at or near the bottom on lab antioxidant tests, and a test tube says nothing about a body anyway.
3“How do I use them, and how long do they keep?”
Built on the five uses on the taste card, on what three storage studies measured, and on why your own fridge test beats any day count in a paper.
Never quote a shelf life you have not tested in your own packaging. Three studies stored pea shoots, and not one of them gave a sell-by day. Never borrow the four weeks from a sealed-bag lab trial for a clamshell in a home fridge, and never repeat the five to seven days you will see online. None of the three studies supports it.
4“Are they safe? I read something about sprouts.”
Built on the difference between a sprout and a shoot, on what tests of seven pea seed lots found, and on saying what you do at your farm. The guide adds two diet notes: vitamin K for anyone on warfarin, and phenylalanine for anyone managing PKU.
Never say your shoots can’t carry bacteria, or that pea shoots resist them. Say what you actually do, starting with where your seed comes from. Never call them safe for everyone. And never repeat the neurotoxin scare, or the ‘perfectly safe raw’ reassurance. No study behind either one measured pea shoots as sold.
“Aren’t pea shoots high in protein?”
Less than you’d think, and I’d rather you heard that from me. Labs in Thailand and Portugal measured it and landed close together: about four grams of protein in every hundred grams of shoots. A good handful, the kind you’d pile on a sandwich, is about twenty grams. That’s under one gram of protein. So no, they’re not a protein food, and I won’t sell them to you as one. The pea protein on shop shelves comes from the dried seed, a different part of the plant. What pea shoots do have is flavor. In a Colorado study, ninety-nine people tasted six kinds of microgreens, and pea shoots got the best average score for flavor, in a top group with broccoli and red cabbage. Eat them for that. Try a handful on your next sandwich and see if you agree.
The other five are written out the same way in the guide, with your farm name on the front.
Never call pea shoots high in protein, a good source of protein or a complete protein. At twenty grams, the two-lab figure is under a gram, less than two percent of the Daily Value, and no full amino acid profile of pea shoots was read for this guide. Never quote the 6.4 grams from one Latvian bag as typical, and never borrow figures from pea protein powder, which is made from the seed.
6“Someone told me these have forty times the nutrients of peas. Is that true?”
Built on why no pea study read for this guide measured anything like it, and on the one comparison that holds up: the same seed, grown in light and in the dark.
Never repeat forty times, or any multiplier, for pea shoots against grown peas. The USDA record passed around as pea microgreens is the edible pod, a different part of the plant. No study read for this guide compared shoots with grown peas under the same conditions. Never pass on cell-culture results as protection against cancer, and never call the isoflavones one lab found phytoestrogens. Traditional medicine uses of the pea are not evidence about a shoot.
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.
What to say when they ask about the protein, and the five questions after it
It is Saturday, the trays are out, and somebody with a protein shake in one hand picks up a bag of pea shoots and asks how much protein is in them. You have about eight seconds. In a survey of 143 US growers, pea shoots came third on the list of what they grow, so it will not be the last time you hear that question12. The guide is what you say next, printed with your farm name on it, and the sheets are what you hand across so they remember which stall it was.
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 guideSixteen 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 can’t drift into one you can’t defend.
- Four stall sheets and a taste card, your name on themPrice, keeping, chef and taste. Pin one to the stall and hand the others across. The taste card is the one for somebody who has never eaten a microgreen. The same set comes in a personal edition if you only want them for yourself.
- All six answers, written outIncluding the one every pea grower hears: the protein question. On this page you get that one in full. In the guide you get the wording for all six, plus the two diet notes for customers on warfarin or managing PKU.
- The measured recordThis page shows four findings. The guide carries the values behind them and dozens more, trial by trial, with statistical letters where the paper printed them. Hand it to the chef who asks for the numbers.
- The license, and the reissue promiseEvery figure traced to a published table or results sentence. 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 protein question included, in the words you’d use across a table rather than the words a journal uses
- Health language and citations locked, so a claim you did not write can’t drift into one you can’t defend
- Ten minutes from download to handing the first one across
Just eating them, not selling? Personal edition, $7
The same four sheets and the taste card, 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 31 published sources, 1578 to 2026. The full list, with journals and direct links, is in the guide.
Superscript markers through this page show which claim rests on which source. The full reference list, with the same numbers, is in the guide.
