Microgreens- how did it start?

Microgreens are often treated as a recent invention. The practice of eating young, tender plants is far older, and the modern version is usually traced to the restaurant kitchens of 1980s California.

A note on this history. The account below is the one repeated consistently across horticultural extension material and the trade press, and we have set it out as we found it. It is not, however, documented in primary sources the way a research finding is — there is no contemporaneous record we can point you to for the exact decade, city or chef. Treat the dates as the received story rather than as established fact.

Ancient origins

The term “microgreens” is modern, but that does not mean the practice began in the last few decades. Eating young, tender plants and sprouts goes back thousands of years. Ancient civilizations in China, Egypt and Rome are described as having valued fresh, unripe greens, cultivating and eating young edible plants to supplement their diets as the weather cooled.

Contemporary microgreens: it started with curiosity

The setting is 1980s California, in the high-end restaurants of San Francisco. Chefs working in the California cuisine movement — the names usually attached to the story are Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck — were experimenting with plating and garnish, and began growing tiny greens to use in a more deliberate way. The initial goal was aesthetic: appearance first, then flavour. Chefs also valued the intensity of the taste. The early range was small — rocket, basil, beetroot, kale and coriander — and expanded from there.

By the mid-1990s, microgreens had moved beyond Southern California kitchens and were gaining ground in the eastern United States. They raised dishes on both taste and appearance, and since we eat with our eyes as much as our mouths, that visual appeal is part of why they spread.

2000: out of restaurants and onto shelves

The turn of the century is the point at which microgreens stopped being a restaurant-only product. They began appearing in local retail stores in the eastern United States, and over the following decade became a familiar sight in grocery stores. The timing helped: they became widely available exactly as interest in healthy eating and in local food was growing.

The phenomenon of microgreens

The microgreens market continues to grow. Several factors sit behind that, and they are worth separating:

• Measured across a number of studies, microgreens often carry higher concentrations of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants than their mature counterparts — though the size of the difference varies a great deal by species, and the comparison is usually made on a dry-weight basis. Our Science Library sets out what the research actually measured.
• What chefs and home cooks value is mainly the intensity of flavour and the range of colours and textures.
• They are versatile — sandwiches, soups, smoothies and salads — and, unlike most crops, you can grow them in a kitchen with no garden at all.

Interest in health, sustainability and plant-based eating continues to grow worldwide, and microgreens sit at the intersection of all three. On the current trajectory they look likely to remain a permanent part of the culinary landscape rather than a passing fashion.