The Health Benefits of Wheat Grass

Wheatgrass has become a popular dietary supplement and even herbal cure since its health-related benefits were discovered by an agricultural chemist called Charles F. Schnabel. Schnabel found out about the curative properties of this young grass coming from wheat plants when he used them to help cure sick hens. With the success of his experiments, Schnabel began to dry and powder said grass for human consumption so as to provide people with more vitamins and minerals than can be taken from eating vegetables alone.

Wheatgrass is known to improve one’s digestion as well as help in detoxifying the body. Some people even claim that drinking the required amount of wheatgrass daily would help prevent chronic diseases as well as cancer, diabetes and even cardiovascular diseases. There are recommended amounts of wheatgrass intake depending on the aim of the person drinking it. If detoxifying the body is the main concern, a person should drink a higher amount of wheatgrass everyday than would be normal if one is taking wheatgrass as a vitamin supplement. Wheatgrass should be taken, mixed with juices or as tablets, before eating and with an empty stomach. People with less than healthy diet may feel nausea if they take a high dosage of wheat grass at once, so that one should increase their intake gradually while making sure to eat the right food.

With all these health benefits, it’s no wonder that wheatgrass is being sold in the markets in different forms as it is nowadays. Wheatgrass can be bought ready to drink from juice bars and cafes, both as a pure ‘green juice’ or mixed in with fruits and vegetables. Bottled juices with wheatgrass contents is also available from health stores as well as tablets, powder (to be mixed in drinks) and as fresh produce to be juiced in your own home.

Powdered wheatgrass is made by juicing the young grass itself and having the liquid removed later on. Commercial juicers would need to be used to do this, since wheatgrass and other vegetables are tougher than most fruits and would need a sturdy masticating juicer in order to extract the juice from the produce in question. Masticating juicers might take longer juicing than a centrifugal juicer, but most people believe that juices extracted using the vegetable juicer have better nutritional value than others.

A good industrial juicer would then need to have enough power in order to break down the cell walls and the fibrous texture of most vegetables and produce pure juice without depleting any of the vitamins and minerals that is there in the produce. Companies producing wheatgrass products would of course need such juicers to ensure quality product that they would be selling in the market. On the other hand, you might want to make your own wheatgrass and vegetable juices in your home yourself. Even though the nutritional value of wheatgrass is not decreased in the process of powdering and such, you might want to try this drink out freshly squeezed. Wheatgrass is available as fresh produce from some health stores, as already mentioned earlier, but they also grow fine indoors in trays, so there are really no obstacles to you growing your own produce in your backyard or greenhouse. You would have to harvest your wheatgrass in its reproductive or jointing age since that is when the grass contains the highest possible nutritional value. Drying and juicing it later would be easy enough. As already mentioned, masticating juicers are best for this kind of juicing, since masticating juicers are better at extracting the juice from tougher produce. On the other hand, fruits and some root crops can be juiced easily enough using the citrus juicer. A centrifugal juicer works by spinning the produce inside a basket like container equipped with very small teeth located in the bottom of the container. These teeth would shred the pulp away while leaving behind the juice to be transferred to a different container by using a spigot attached to the juicer itself.

A masticating juicer would ‘chew’ on the produce being fed into a tube while it releases the pulp into another passage. Masticating juicers take longer with their work than centrifugal juicers, but are generally quieter and tougher. Carrot juice, nut butter and wheatgrass, of course, can be made using this kind of juicer.

Juicing fruits and vegetables would be a great help to the body’s digestion, as well as increase the amount of vitamins and minerals actually absorbed by the body. For one, the nutrients that people get from eating fruits and vegetables get trapped inside the fibre in the said produce where it would be harder for the body to absorb. Of course, fibre is still a necessary part of a healthy diet, but in this case, drinking freshly squeezed juice would up the nutritional intake a person can have compared to nutrients ingested by eating whole fruits and vegetables.

Some people might also have troubles eating raw produce like fresh vegetables. For children and kids who do not like to eat vegetables, ‘green juices’ can be mixed with a couple of apples or grapes for a better-tasting juice mix.

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