Did you know that the fruit of grass is grain? Or that wheat, rye, corn, rice, oats, barley, sorghum, millet, spelt, kamut, and even bamboo and sugarcane are grasses? Or that grasses offer their greatest nutritive value at a specific point of physical growth, long before the bearing of fruits?

Walt Whitman, the great American poet, wrote a series of beautiful poems that he called Leaves of Grass. Most of us today are too busy to read Whitman or even contemplate the grass beneath our feet that softens the earth and makes it beautiful.

What Progress Left Behind
In their ancient wisdom, our bodies crave grass. Though vitamin, mineral, glandular and herbal supplements are essential aspects of health, none of these match the nutritive value found in grasses. Once, even the prestigious American Medical Association recognized the value of grass. In 1939, the Journal of the American Medical Association Council on Foods announced that Cerophyl, a whole food concentrate made with young rapidly growing leaves of wheat, oats and barley, would be "listed in the book of accepted foods." But, then, following World War II, the concept of "better living through chemistry" took hold of the nation. Most of us forgot our ancient wisdom. Vitamins could be synthesized, minerals isolated.

Nutrient-dense Grass
Why do we crave grass? The grasses-known today as green super foods-supply many nutritional factors that even today scientists cannot duplicate. Is it the chlorophyll-the trapped sunlight that is the basis for terrestrial life? Or is it the grass juice factor or enzymes in these plants that are thought to be found nowhere else? We can't deny this fact: grass is perhaps the nutrient-densest food on this green earth.

Thrive on Grass
In the 1930s and 1940s, America's leading scientists, led by biochemist George Kohler, worked on grass research at the University College of Agriculture, University of Wisconsin, Madison. The Kohler team was remarkable. They made the discovery of niacin (vitamin B3), as well as the grass juice factor, a nutritive compound in grass that still can't be duplicated by vitamins or minerals.

In an experimental study, published in the Journal of Nutrition, Dr. Kohler and his team compared the growth of animals fed either dried grass powder, lettuce, cabbage, or spinach. For eight weeks, young guinea pigs received only lettuce, cabbage, spinach or dried grass powder. The animals receiving the lettuce or cabbage lost weight. With spinach, the animals barely sustained their weight. But with cereal grass, the animals thrived and gained a normal amount of weight. The researchers noted that "the growth stimulating factor of grass was distinct from all the known vitamins." This study was confirmed in subsequent studies, published in the same journal or presented at the Cornell Nutrition Conference.

More Ancient Wisdom
Better yet, you should eat fermented grass. Most of us have never known the power of fermentation. We often think the superior way to consume veggies and fruit is raw. But this isn't always so. Sometimes proper food preparation methods release important compounds that would otherwise pass undigested and unused through our systems. Fermentation is nature's method of preparing foods for easy assimilation in the human body. Most of us don't even know that food fermentation is driven by beneficial microorganisms, producing enzymes that breakdown foods into useable compounds.

Every long-lived culture in the world has consumed fermented foods with their meals-fermented vegetables, dairy, and even meats.

The PERFECT FOOD™
The perfect combination of grass juice therapy and fermentation has been combined in the powdered (or tableted) super green food, PERFECT FOOD™ from Garden of Life.

Predigestion of the nutrient-rich superfoods contained in PERFECT FOOD™ is accomplished by use of the proprietary Poten-Zyme™ process. This ancient method of bio-fermentation incorporates beneficial microorganisms (probiotics) and their enzymes into the foods to gently break them down into their most basic elements. This is not something that any company could easily duplicate. "Our fermentation is done in Australia because the type of fermentation is not available anywhere else in the world," notes Jordan Rubin, founder of Garden of Life. "Our lactic acid fermentation process which we call Poten-Zyme™ uses a mother culture of probiotics that was handed down to us by a Russian medical doctor who treated soldiers in World War II with various digestive illnesses using these particular strains. Grown from organic grains, seeds and vegetables, these probiotic strains are the only strains in the world that we know of that are certified organic. We now have a rare, self-sustaining culture.

"We take grass, algae, seeds, legumes or grains and cover them with our mother culture consisting of 14 different plant-based organisms. Fermentation lasts three to six weeks, whereas typical fermentation lasts one to four days. The end result is a food that is nearly completely broken down and predigested with large amounts of probiotics, enzymes, B vitamins and proteins. But also created are several novel phytochemicals that the body craves, including the body's master antioxidant SOD (superoxide dismutase), as well as various immune-supportive beta-glucans, and many other antioxidants-all created from the 'alchemy' involved in fermentation. Take our spirulina and grasses. We know spirulina and grasses are a rich source of beta-carotene and chlorophyll. However, when beta-carotene is consumed we are counting on the body to convert it to vitamin A or retinol; unfortunately, unhealthy persons cannot always make this conversion. Our spirulina is a dark blue-green at the beginning of fermentation but a month or month-and-a-half later is green with orange overtones because the carotenoids and chlorophyll have been liberated."

References
Cannon, M. & Emerson, G. Journal of Nutrition, 1939;18:155.
Kohler, G.O. "The relation of the grass factor to guinea pig nutrition." Journal of Nutrition, 1937;15(5):445.
Meyerowitz, S. Wheat Grass: Nature's Finest Medicine. Barrington, MA: Sproutman Publications, 1999.
Randall, S.B., et al. "Distribution of the grass juice factor in plant and animal materials." Journal of Nutrition, 1940;20:459.
Scott, M.L. Proceedings Cornell Nutrition Conference, 1951:73.

Disclaimer: These Articles and or information are not intended to mitigate the symptoms or cure the specific diagnosis of cancer or cancer related disease states.