Journal

In a Missouri Extension tray budget, labels, packaging and marketing are 50 to 60 percent of cost. Growing the plant is 17 to 23 percent and seed under 10.

Inflammation has not been measured in people eating microgreens. And when researchers pooled ten broccoli sprout trials, the combined result came out at something that could be zero.

For most people yes, and the frightening statistics belong to sprouts. At least 15 microgreen recalls and recall warnings are on record across two countries, and no illness outbreak has been linked to any of them. No public health agency has attributed an outbreak to a microgreen. That is not the same as zero risk.

Yes, and the technique is the whole answer: add them late. Every documented method adds them at or near the end, and pea shoots are the one crop with a real cooked recipe behind it.

A microgreen is 87 to 94 percent water, so a whole tray dries down to a couple of spoonfuls. Drying is not a kill step, freezing does not make greens keep their crunch, and only one crop has ever been measured.

One of these claims is probably true and has nothing to do with microgreens. The other was tested by injecting a compound into mice. Here is which is which.

The number is real. It belongs to one nutrient in one crop. Used for microgreens as a category it is wrong in both directions, because some pairs run far above 40 and for at least one compound the mature plant is the more concentrated of the two.

2.5 grams a person is the only weighed serving in a published recipe. Computed from the yield and seed figures for 38 crops, that serving costs about 1.5 cents of seed, against retail at 16 to 21 times as much per ounce.

Cold, dry, unwashed and vented, and basil is the exception. Controlled studies cover about a dozen crops out of sixty-two, and they disagree on the best temperature.