Wheatgrass Shots – The Scoop

Posted by Katie in Blog | 1 comment

Feb 18, 13

Purely by coincidence, I met a rep the other day, for a company that produces and sells wheatgrass shots.  Here’s what I found out!

One half ounce of wheatgrass juice is equivalent of 2 lbs of salad greens! Talk about getting your daily servings! There is also the additional benefit of your digestive system not being full of all that plant matter – which can lead to gas and bloating.

Wheatgrass is considered by many to be a ‘super food’.  It’s basically the small blades of grass that first shoot up from the ground before maturing into wheat or rye.  Wheatgrass is highly nutritious, provides high amounts of energy and is claimed to cure a number of illnesses and diseases.  For years now, people have been juicing these blades of grass and serving them up as little green shots of goodness – but there was a problem.

According to Carol Macintosh of Evergreen Wheatgrass Juice, Wheatgrass has traditionally been grown indoors in trays.  As a general consequence of farming, some seeds don’t germinate.  Which is not usually a big deal.  However, indoors, in the trays, these non-germinating seeds were actually turning mouldy.  When harvested, the blades of wheatgrass are cut ‘above the mould line’, but really it didn’t matter – because the pungent flavour of the mould worked its way into the plants at the root.  This is why a lot of people who may have had wheatgrass in the past, had to choke past the bitter after-taste, and while receiving numerous benefits from the juice, had to suffer through nausea or headaches.  These ‘side-effects’ were attributed to a ‘healing crisis’ or ‘detoxification process’, but Carol claims that they were actually a result of the mould.

Outside, the wheatgrass gets exposure to sunlight and colder temperatures which kill the mould spores before they can pollute the grasses.

What Evergreen Wheatgrass does is grow their wheatgrass outdoors.  This makes all the difference, because the two things that kill mould are cold and sunlight – two things that the plants get exposure to outside.  The other benefit of growing wheatgrass outside, is that the plant grows past the sprout stage –  to the vegetable stage.  This is important, because as a sprout, wheatgrass has a high amount of simple sugars – making it syrupy and creating an addictive element for people who might have a candida or yeast overgrowth in their gut.  Allowing the plant to grow to the vegetable stage, allows those simple sugars to become complex carbohydrates making it much healthier for you.

Juice gets flash frozen to preserve the chlorophyl. Note the convenient size!

Wheatgrass is incredibly healthy for you in powder form.  However, Evergreen Wheatgrass has an additional benefit in that it is flash frozen only minutes after being juiced with the intent of preserving the chlorophyl.  Chlorophyl is the first ‘storage phase’ of sunlight energy, and is incredibly beneficial to the human body.   The benefits of it can be lost in the drying process but is protected by the flash freeze.  In fact, after you defrost an Evergreen Wheatgrass shot, you’ll notice that it is still a vibrant, healthy, living green colour.

How Does It Taste?

Anyone who has done a tequila shot or two, and then complains about the flavour of a wheatgrass shot, needs to re-evaluate their priorities. 🙂

These Wheatgrass shots, come prepackaged in little ‘ice cube trays’ each containing just over half an ounce of juice.  Running it under warm water for a minute or two will defrost it, and then you can peel back the foil and knock it back mardi gras style.  Taken this way, wheatgrass juice – tastes like… grass.  I had a flashback to summertime and freshly mowed lawns.  For those who can’t imagine, its very close to an asparagus like flavour.  I had my first shot after chewing some mint gum, so I think my taste buds were confused, but it didn’t taste strong, bitter or sour to me at all.  Just very green and earthy.  Several other people around me had a shot as well and the consensus was that while not ‘delicious’ the favour was certainly something you could get used to.  Especially since the tiny shot was the equivalent of 2lbs of salad greens.  For a person who does not eat enough green vegetables, those little shots could solve a lot of problems for me.

Another person present for our ‘taste-test’ also brought up an interesting point.  She worked with children with special needs – many of whom would not eat their vegetables.  A half an ounce of the wheatgrass shot could easily be hidden in a milk shake or chocolate milk with non being the wiser.  This opens up wheatgrass shots in my opinion to a whole new market place beyond trendy yogi’s.

If you are interested in learning more about this, I’ll include some videos and links below.  You can order a (frozen) case of Evergreen Wheatgrass Juice from Clarington’s Wellness Path in Bowmanville for just under $1.00 a shot.  You can also contact me direct – since I now have a freezer full – and I can swing past with a sample for you too.