ISGA Marketing Proposal Supported by Regional Growers
- By Barbara Sanderson, Jonathan’s Sprouts

Recently I was asked to speak about sprouts at a regional Food Fair. My topic was Health Benefits. I decided to create a flyer to hand out that would highlight some of the recent scientific research that is revealing the real miracle living inside this powerful food.

I knew all of this information before, but the act of putting it together into a flyer startled me. For instance, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA, Xiangqun Gao, molecular scientist wrote: “A diet high in broccoli sprouts is a safe, long-term approach to preventing age-related macular degeneration and blindness. It may protect the eye from damage caused by the sun’s ultraviolet light, believed to be the primary cause of degeneration.

Here’s another: Dr. Andrew Weil, famous US author of books and newsletters has been warning people not to eat sprouts because of the toxin L-canavanine that was used in an experiment to induce a relapse of Lupis in monkeys. The L-canavanine that he used was extracted from alfalfa seeds and fed to the monkeys as 50% of their diet. More recent studies have demonstrated benefit for pancreatic, colon and leukemia cancers from consumption of canavanine in reasonable quantities. We all know that an overdose of the best medicine can kill you.

Another highlight I discovered, about wheatgrass: “Clinical observation showed several patients with plantar fasciitis responded quite rapidly (sometimes in a day or two) to treatment using the wheatgrass-based topical application.”

We have got to get this good news out There

So… Here’s my plan!

All we need to do is find 12 or more companies (US or outside the US who are selling into the states) who are willing to commit to $500 per month for a year to retain an agency. The PR will be focused on these things:
• Re-branding sprouts in the public mind from “Health Food” to “Protection from Disease”.

• Contributing companies will have local events – Guerilla Marketing – that will highlight their companies.

• National press releases will appear, (and especially around the times when there is “bad news” and news agencies are looking for information about sprouts)

• Press kits will be distributed to targeted news media for when they are looking for an article to print.

• Information flyers (containing recipes, photographs, nutrition information, etc.) will be made available for all sprout growers to distribute to their customers.

• The agency will work with each of the contributing companies to produce articles for them and distribute them to their local media.

• More….

So far, we have gotten commitments from 5 companies and a one-time donation from an affiliate member of the ISGA. If you can sign on with us, please contact me at Barbara@jonathansorganic.com.