Wheatgrass Juice
11/12/19
Did you know that a simple drink of liquidised wheatgrass can: "aid your body in it’s daily detoxification process, support healthy skin healing, respiratory function, gastrointestinal health and fertility" and "it can eliminate toxins, help with digestion, boost your metabolism, lower your cholesterol, boost your immune system and lower your blood pressure? It can help with diabetes and arthritis, and may be a powerful addition to cancer treatments" too. Amazing!. Why is the National Health Service not ensuring every kid has a daily glass of liquidised grass, like we did with milk until Thatcher snatched it away? After all, Robert Downey Jr drinks it all the time and he's Iron Man, right?
Regular readers on all the facts over the past year will recognise so many of these same claims being made by supplements and 'superfood' marketers. So many weasel words like 'help', 'aids', 'support' and 'may be' caveat the claims but to a lay person they can be quite attractive. The marketers back up the claims with an explanation of why wheatgrass is particularly beneficial: Chlorophyll. One website claims that 'Wheatgrass juice contains up to 70% chlorophyll, which is an important blood builder'. Another claim is that 'Wheatgrass is high in oxygen like all green plants that contain chlorophyll. This is beneficial because the brain and all body tissues function at an optimal level in a highly- oxygenated environment' and 'It is a nutritionally complete food which will sustain the growth and development of laboratory animals and humans alike. Wheatgrass has what is called the grass-juice factor, which has been shown to keep herbivorous animals alive practically indefinitely.'
Do we need to remind you we are not plants? Chlorophyll is the green stuff in plants that help convert sunlight into energy. It has no nutritional benefit for humans. Also, though we're not doctors, we recommend you might want to get your oxygen from your lungs rather than rely on a juice drink. The truth is, wheatgrass is pretty useless as a foodstuff. We are not herbivores, we don't eat grass for the reason that it is not particularly high in many vitamins and minerals we need. Also, wheatgrass can be pretty damaging to people's digestive systems if they're not used to it, even many of the woo sites warn you not to drink too much of it at first. Some skeptics who have tried it says it tastes disgusting and we wonder if this is case of assuming that it therefore must be good for you?