Back to Nature.(grass as food)(Brief Article)

Our original food may be our finest medicine

Fifty million years ago, the oceans receded enough to reveal the land and soon after, the first sign of vegetation appeared -- grass. No matter where we journey on this earth, from the Outback "down under," to the Arctic circle with its one-inch tundra, to our greatest cities -- there is grass.

Grass is the primary source of food for wild grazing animals. Unlike the animals, however, humans cannot digest the fiber in grass, so we eat the grain that grows into grass. Wheat, barley, rice, rye, oats, millet and corn are the world's top food crops. Plant any of them and you get grass.

In the 1970s, Japanese researcher and doctor of medicine, Yoshihide Hagiwara, restored his health by drinking the grass juice powder made from young barley shoots. He cut and tested his grass at five, 10 and 20 inches of growth and determined that the 10-to-12 inch plant provided the maximum nutrient value. According to Hagiwara, properly grown and dried barley grass juice powder contains 11 times the calcium of cow's milk, five times the iron of spinach, four times the vitamin B-1 of whole wheat flour, seven times the vitamin C in oranges and an abundance of vitamin B-12, 80 mg per 100 grams.

The dried juice powder from young grass shoots contains a broad range of concentrated nutrients. But the therapeutic benefits of grass go beyond its vitamins and minerals. Grass is a superb source of high-quality antioxidants that prevents us from aging at the cellular level ...