wheat grass... any science to this fad?

ROFL! Chlorophyll is sort of a closeish cousin to heme - both are porphyrins, which are small molecules. Hemoglobin is a largish protein that is bound to four heme molecules. Chlorophyll carries magnesium, and heme iron. I'd say that "unusual" is a charitable word to use for that claim.....and unless the drink is opaque dark green it doesn't have enough chlorophyll in it to notice, anyway.And every time I hear "rids the body of toxins" I hear ducks talking their native tongue.

There's the paydirt right there. Lots of quackery gets hidden behind the fact that our bodies cannot, in general, take up whole enzymes or any other proteins.Pure speculation: chlorophyll taken along with iron, like the 1936 study Brenna cites, might really do some good. My very strong hunch, based on chemistry, is that iron would displace magnesium and get tied up with the chlorophyll "framework." Once there, I can easily imagine that it would be more readily absorbed by the intestines. It doesn't say what form of iron the study used, but it is apparently true that not every dosage form is readily available to our digestive systems.

Well, it's the cellulose (and little chunks of silica) in grass that humans can't digest, and those components aren't likely to be in an extract. But I'll agree that a bit of clarity from the folks pushing this stuff as "nutritional" would be a Good Thing. What vitamins? What nutrients?I'll bet that V-8 tastes a lot better, too. With or without vodka.

Clean it real well (up to placing it directly on a campfire until any non-iron stuff burns off), put a thick film of cooking oil in it, bake at 225 or so for several hours and optionally let it sit in the oven for a day or two thereafter. Never put in a dishwasher or soak in dishwater.Pay $5 if the second-hand store absolutely insists.

Hi, jaredib! Welcome to EvC!I went to your page, and things did not start off too well. The first bullet point there says This is laughably wrong. Chlorophyll refers to one of several pigments with a molecular weight of around 900 daltons; hemoglobin is a protein with a molecular weight of 75 times that. Hemoglobin does incorporate heme, a family of iron-containing pigments that are "cousins" to chlorophyll, but the two are not at all "nearly identical." Heme B, for example, has a molecular weight of 616.And I'll bet that Bermuda grass would have a very similar set of analytical results to those the Kiwi company gives for wheatgrass. Heck, rice stems may give you all that and will provide a lot more silica!Edited by Coragyps, : tpyo....

There's nothing there to set wheatgrass apart from a thousand other potential sources of vitamin A, or vitamin C, or of selenium. The analysis from New Zealand reports "data better that assertion.Edited by Coragyps, : addition

Hey, Buzz! Does Ann have any double-blind studies on "curing cancer"? She has a published policy:

I'm sure wheatgrass can be cheaper if you avoid going to "schools" in Puerto Rico to learn how to drink tea made from straw. But cowshit is cheaper yet, is frequently made from wheatgrass, and has as much evidence for its efficacy in healing disease as wheatgrass does.