Wheatgrass is the freshly sprouted first leaves of the common wheat plant, used as a food, drink, or nutritional supplement. Wheatgrass is served freeze-dried or fresh, and so it differs from wheat malt, that is convectively dried. Wheatgrass is allowed to grow longer and taller than wheat malt.
Like maximum plants, wheatgrass incorporates chlorophyll, amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and enzymes. Blessings of wheatgrass variety from providing supplemental nutrition to having unique healing properties, however, these claims have no longer been scientifically proven.
Wheatgrass juice is often available at juice bars, and some people grow and juice their very own in their homes. It is to be had fresh as produce, in tablets, frozen juice, and powder.
Wheatgrass is also bought commercially as a spray, cream, gel, rub down lotion, and liquid herbal supplement. Because it is extracted from wheatgrass sprouts, i.E. earlier than the wheat seed or “berry” used in flour starts to form, wheatgrass juice is gluten-free
Benefits of Wheat Grass
Proponents of wheatgrass make many claims for its properties, ranging from promoting general well being to cancer prevention. However, consistent with the American Cancer Society, “available scientific evidence does not support the idea that wheatgrass or the wheatgrass weight-reduction plan can treat or prevent disease”
History
Wheatgrass is traditionally utilized in both Persian and Indian festivals and rituals. However, the intake of wheatgrass inside the Western world started inside the 1930s because of experiments carried out by using Charles Schnabel in his tries to popularize the plant.By 1940, cans of Schnabel’s powdered grass were on sale in primary drug shops at some point of America and Canada.
Ann Wigmore became additionally a strong endorse for the consumption of wheatgrass as part of a raw food plan. Wigmore, a founder of the Hippocrates Health Institute, believed that wheatgrass could cleanse the body of toxins at the same time as presenting the right balance of nutrients as entire food. She also taught that wheatgrass may be used to treat people with critical ailments.
Cultivation
Wheatgrass may be grown interior or outdoors. A commonplace method for sprout production interior is often on trays in an increasing medium along with a potting mix. Leaves are harvested when they increase a “split” as some other leaf emerges.
These can then reduce off with scissors and permit a 2d crop of shoots to form. Sometimes a 3rd cutting is possible, but maybe harder and feature fewer sugars than the first.
Schnabel’s studies was conducted with wheatgrass grown outdoors in Kansas. His wheatgrass required two hundred days of slow boom through the winter and early spring, while it turned into harvested on the jointing degree.
He claimed that at this degree the plant reached its peak dietary value; after jointing, concentrations of chlorophyll, protein, and nutrients decline sharply. Wheatgrass is harvested, freeze-dried, then offered in pill and powdered concentrates for human and animal consumption. Indoor-grown wheatgrass is used to make wheatgrass juice powder.
Nutritional content
Wheatgrass is a source of potassium, dietary fiber, nutrition A, nutrition C, diet E (alpha tocopherol), nutrition K, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, pantothenic acid, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium. Wheatgrass is also a source of protein (less than one gram in keeping with 28 grams).
The nutrient content of wheatgrass juice is roughly equivalent to that of darkish leafy vegetables