Instructional &
Informational Posts
If the first words that exit your mouth after hearing “wheatgrass” are “No, thank you” (edited for politeness) there are other options.
1. Stick to your guns and keep drinking other liquids
2. Try Evergreen Juices.
This Canadian company may help you to develop a whole new relationship with wheatgrass. No yucky-face afterwards, as determined by tuja’s very discerning taste testers.
Evergreen Juices only use the milder tasting grains wheat and rye rather than bitter barley and oat. This assures a smoother taste with their gluten-free, certified organic and local product. There are books aplenty about the miracle of the distilled green liquid, but we decided to go Cliff’s Notes on you.
We spoke with Carroll MacIntosh (CEO) as well as Courtney Gackstetter (Sales and Marketing Rep). What better people to teach us that wheatgrass may help our sex lives, our hot yoga practice, as well as our Christmas baking? Read on…
Can everyone learn to love wheatgrass?
Carroll: Indoor and outdoor wheatgrass juices are completely different. Indoor wheatgrass can contain a mold that can produce symptoms from nausea to anaphylactic shock. This mold is the bitter aftertaste many people associate with wheatgrass. To be clear, we’re not bad-mouthing indoor wheatgrass, just the reaction to it. We can guarantee that you will have no reaction to our outdoor wheatgrass!
What makes outdoor wheatgrass different?
Carroll: Wheatgrass produced in trays doesn’t have the root structure so it can’t move past the sprout stage. When it’s planted outdoors, it has the chance to get to a vegetable stage.
What does the vegetable stage of wheatgrass taste like?
Carroll: Outdoor wheatgrass is enriched with water and is very mild.
Courtney: Commonly we get told it tastes like green tea or watermelon rind. Even my dog is obsessed with it!
What do you believe is the number one reason why people should consider adding wheatgrass to their diet?
Carroll: Wheatgrass is one of the very few foods you can call a complete food. The chlorophyll in wheatgrass gives it the same molecular structure of blood. It’s strange to say, but it is like you are drinking green blood and it is turning into hemoglobin.
You sell your wheatgrass frozen. Why?
Carroll: People have the impression that when you freeze something, it’s dead. Freezing doesn’t kill something, it immobilizes it. We try to freeze it as quickly as possible to stop the enzymatic activity. This preserves the nutrients. It’s a healthy convenience food.
Can wheatgrass be used for cooking and/or baking?
Courtney: I have used wheatgrass in icing at Christmastime instead of food colouring. Many people throw it into smoothies.
Carroll: You want to use it as soon as possible after defrosting. We don’t recommend heating it.
Courtney: It works well for hot yoga in your water bottle. It tastes like tea, but hydrates you and it keeps you energized.
People describe wheatgrass as an energizer. How so?
Courtney: It turns into oxygen in your bloodstream! It absorbs into your body within 20 seconds. It will keep you up, so we suggest that you don’t have it late at night.
Carroll: Although, one couple told us they took it before bed so that there was no excuse not to be tired.
‘Nuff said.
For more odes to wheatgrass, read Evergreen Juice’s article “What’s so great about Wheatgrass?” With 40 reasons given, Evergreen must be onto something!
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Courtney Sunday has two cats and a boyfriend who are very patient with her health and wellness obsessions. She teaches yoga, Pilates and indoor cycling and gives Thai massages through her Toronto business Om at Home Yoga. When she is tuckered out, she takes up the sport of sleeping.
