From Seed to Life: Unveiling the Vitality of Live Seed & Live Oils

Raspberry seeds flew everywhere, dusting the ground near our seed dryer. We learned a lot of things in our first years of seed drying. First and foremost was don’t overfill our bulk bags with dried seed or we’d be enveloped in a cloud of raspberry seeds and would be stuck picking seeds out of our hair for days.

Lo and behold, a lawn of raspberry seedlings greeted us the following spring. Wherever our raspberry seeds touched ground they had sprouted. Live seed germinates. And only live seed can be used to produce what we call “live oil”.

Many seeds are harvested after they’ve dried, such as sunflower, soy and corn. Grains are usually allowed to dry to around 13% moisture content before they’re harvested. It’s different for seeds that come from fruit processing such as raspberry, kiwi, cranberry, and grapes. These seeds are released when the fruit is crushed for making juices and purees. If the fruit or the purees are pasteurized (145°F for 30 minutes) before the seeds are removed the seeds are killed. They won’t germinate and the oil in the seed is rendered rancid.

Using live seed is only the first step in producing live oils. Live seed has the energy within itself to germinate and grow. A live seed is unaltered and retains the natural goodness, imbued with life force. The challenge is to transfer the vitality of the seed to the oil produced from it. This can only be done by cold-pressing the seed, which is not only the gentlest way to extract the oil from the seed but is the only method that preserves the natural composition of the oil as it is found in the seed. Chemical extraction of the oil from the seed, on the other hand, not only kills the vitality and goodness of the oil it also introduces traces of toxic chemicals to the oil. Supercritical extraction of oils from seeds is a selective process that, depending on production parameters, selectively extracts certain parts of the oil from the seed and not others. Live oils are oils full of vitality because they are true reflections of the oil found in live seeds.