Talk:Wheatgrass

message: I would like to see objective research backing up the following claims:
"Wheatgrass grown under artificial conditions indoors in trays does not have the proper balance of nutrients found in wheatgrass grown outdoors under natural conditions"
"Growing wheatgrass in a tray in warm greenhouse conditions is not optimal and is certainly not natural"
"The chemical composition is not balanced"
"the juice from this "artifically grown" wheatgrass tends to have a bad flavor as well as a high bacteria and mold content which is the usual cause of the nausea"
As it stands, most of these claims are poorly defined.  Under what standards do we judge wheatgrass production to be optimal or suboptimal? Where is the evidence indicating higher bacteria and mold content for wheatgrass grown indoors? Let alone evidence suggesting that this is the cause of nausea, or even that indoor wheatgrass causes more nausea than outdoor wheatgrass. As for being "not natural", similar arguments could be made for the outlawing of pants. This section reads like a new-age manifesto. --Unknown
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RESPONSE TO ABOVE:
Until the information was added about the importance of growing wheatgrass naturally, this piece did read like a "new-age manifesto."  The additional information about the importance of growing wheatgrass as nature intended was obviously designed to combat the newage nonsense about growing wheatgrass indoors in trays.
It should obvious to anyone that plants forced to grow 20 times faster than nature intended in temperatures that are three times warmer than nature intended are not as nutritious as plants grown under natural conditions.  The photographs of the pale hot house wheatgrass being fed into a juicer compared with the dark green wheatgrass growing in the winter outdoors should prove to anyone who understands even elementary agriculture and nutrition that tray-grown wheatgrass is not as good as the real thing.  Since you wrote the above, a link has been added comparing hot house wheatgrass with the wheatgrass grown under natural conditions.
For more scientific evidence that addresses your concerns, an excellent review of literature on wheatgrass and other cereal grass is Cereal Grass - What's in it for You. This review includes more than 130 scientific references in the bibliography.  
Regarding the problem with mold in growing wheatgrass under unnatural conditions, even Ann Wigmore agreed that mold is a problem with wheatgrass grown indoors in warm conditions.  Mold is a well-documented problem, and several hot-house operations have been shut down because of it.  Since you wrote the above, an additional link has been added that also addresses the mold problem. --Unknown
Another link to the mold problem:
http://www.cityfarmer.org/wheatgrass.html
To help with the problem I've added "Citation needed" to the sentences that are particularly problematic. I'm not saying that all of these marked claims are wrong, but it is without question that they are currently unsupported by the article as written. Match facts with credible sources. The book you mention does not appear to have an index and the table of contents is of no help in finding information about key claims, vis, the relative occurrence of mold on indoor versus outdoor wheatgrass, the nutrient content of spring wheatgrass grown indoors for 30 days vs spring wheatgrass grown outdoors for 30 days, whether mold is in fact the cause of any naseau, or whether nausea is more common for indoor vs. outdoor wheatgrass, etc.  If you read carefully, you will agree that the reference listed for "Mold and wheatgrass" does not address any of the above issues. It is half anecdotal stories, and the other half is irrelevant to the main problems with this section. Please provide proper references if available. I have also deleted usage of biased phrases like "true wheatgrass" and "real wheatgrass", as such would imply the existence of "false wheatgrass", which is not a scientiffic position. --128.113.89.58 18:46, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factual accuracy 

message: Not adding this to the article because I don't have a citeable source for it, but ... wheatgrass juice can cause a nasty allergic reaction in some people, even people not allergic to grasses usually. --FOo 08:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Allergic reaction 

message: A package of wheat grass powder I have says that the species is Triticum aestivum.  However, this article states that it's a different species.  Which is correct?  Badagnani 02:03, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Species

message: "These claims have neither been proven nor disproven." has been replaced with "these claims have not been proven." The burdon of proof should be on those who consider wheatrgrass to be beneficial 
Nice edit.
--AaronOfAbsalom 12:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree.  Wikipedia is a source of information, it is not a claims court.  If too little research has been done to make any substantial conclusions about wheatgrass, the article should simply say so.  --Karuna8 15:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The point is that unproven claims are not somehow different from undisproven claims. "Neither proven nor disproven" is redundant. If a claim has been disproven, subsequent efforts to prove it are written off. If a claim is proven, then it's been strengthened to the point where it is generally accepted as fact and nobody bothers trying to disprove it. If something has not been proven, it doesn't bear mentioning that it has not been disproven. It smacks of a hasty attempt to make it look good in spite of a lack of evidence. --SquidDNA 13:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Saying something has been neither proven nor disproven in this case is misleading, as medical science cannot disprove that wheatgrass is beneficial. Swax 05:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Neither can medical science disprove that I have a solid gold house that I won't show to anyone. You can make any ludicrous claim you want to, the burden of proof is always on YOU, not on someone else to disprove. This is how science works. --SquidDNA 13:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't mean to nitpick, but I have to point out that science cannot prove anything, it can only disprove. If you want to "prove" something, the best you can hope for is to disprove the opposite. This is a basic premise of the scientific method --- hypotheses are postulated, and then scientists go about trying to disprove them. If, after rigorous attacks by scientists, the hypothesis is still consistent in explaining a phenomenon, the hypothesis can then be considered to be a theory (or, "proven true" in the eyes of casual observers). However, even a theory cannot formally be considered to be proven true, because science cannot do this.
With this in mind, when someone hypothesizes anecdotally that wheatgrass has a certain beneficial health effect, it cannot be immediately considered to be "true", and it falls upon scientific skeptics to go about setting up experiments to try to disprove this claim. If, after a number of credible, unbiased, and rigorously structured studies have been performed which demonstrate no positive effects of wheat grass on health issue X, then the hypothesis can be discarded, and considered unproven. 
The same goes the other way. If someone hypothesizes that wheat grass does not have a certain beneficial health benefit, then it is up to scientists to create expeeriments to try to disprove that. If these experiments show positive health effects of wheat grass, then the original hypothesis can be discarded and wheat grass can be considered to be beneficial.
These experiements are not at all difficult to do; this is the stuff of standard empirical medical study, and I'm surprised that so few of them have apparently been performed to cite in this article, based on the comments on this board.Kram-bc 16:43, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, I was the one who posted the "nutrition facts" external link which doesn't seem to back up any of these claims at all. -- Librarianofages 21:58, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Health Claims 

message: I've started work on a health benefits section, relying particular on a recent article in Choice magazine which is primarily focussed on debunking myths about wheatgrass. I've noticed that the article's available online, I'll try and continue to address the health claims from that article and other sources if I get time. If someone feels like getting stuck into it though, go ahead.
Oops, didn't sign... Pacey 09:43, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Health Benefits 

message: The only sourced information on this page are articles critical of wheatgrass. Someone has to take the time to find reputable counter-opinions. Further, there is clear bias in the way the article is written: it lists so many anecodotal examples of health benefits in a row as to insinuate that we're witnessing a placebo effect. Someone needs to take the time to find which health benefits are more and less supported by research. This someone is not me. Whoever added all the references to the single negative source should have found at least one reputable counter-source to not make the article so terribly imbalanced. Hpatenaude 16:23, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable neutrality 

message: This whole article seems to be about wheatgrass juice, and yet Wheatgrass juice links to Wheatgrass.  Seems backward.  --Karuna8 20:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isn't it Wheatgrass Juice? 

message: added this comment to the Usage section of the article. I moved it here:
:The average dose listed here is larger than the "large" size you can buy at a "juice" bar. There needs to be more citations about that 2-4 ounce size as well as taking it 5 times a day. That does not sound right. 
--Heron 16:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As anyone who has researched and personally felt the beneficial effects of juicing understand is that by removng the pulp, seeds and solids portions of the plant you are concentrating the 'lifeblood' of the plant. This makes the vitamins, minerals and trace elements, which are mostly found and suspended in the plant juices readily available for ingestion/digestion. This is not theory. Amounts of unuseable solid material from juicing are enormous. As much as 97% (by volume) is compost, leaving only concentrated liquid. Liquid is a freindly and fast form of nutrition available to the body. At times too fast. As Dr. Lendon Heinerman suggests it's like putting 200 octane fuel in your car, the danger is that the engine may not be able to handle it. If you make a drink that is basically from a natural and beneficial food without chemical or genetic processes wouldn't it follow that it to would be good for you? Why are we debating the use of foods which have been around for millenia? why do we not question the use of transfats, additives and sweetners in our processed foods. Why, as a nation, do we eat THREE POUNDS of white sugar a WEEK?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.193.219.92 (talk) 17:13, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Objection 

message: the link in the citation on vitamin b12 content shows no such thing. it just links to a nutrition database search page that produces no results when wheat grass or anything similar is entered. if someone can't find a better source i'll delete it in a few days--Mongreilf (talk) 10:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually I will fix the link. Anthon01 (talk) 14:13, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm sceptical, but don't have access to the citation to argue, it seems to be a health food proselytising book, which are often not reliable though this isn't enough for me to want to erase the edit. The Vegan Society insists there are no reliable vegetable sources for B12 , and the wikipedia article on Vitamin B12 lists a few claimed vegetable sources that have proved spurious - including barley grass. AFAIK vitamin B12 is synthesised only by bacteria and wheat grass may have vitamin B12 in it by virtue of soil bacteria that are present on the plant. The wheat grass I use (Garden of Life brand) makes no claim to include any vitamin B12--Mongreilf (talk) 18:28, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see your concern. Lets see what else I can dig up. Anthon01 (talk) 22:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  B12 

message: I'm concerned that none of the sources meet WP:MEDRS (the studies are old and pilot studies).  It might be helpful to get some perspectives from WP:FTN. --Ronz (talk) 03:29, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Health claims

message: This section smacks of WP:NOTHOWTO to me. It's only of use to those who want to sprout wheatgrass themselves. Muleattack (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indoor growing and mold 

message: Sources 6 and 7 don't tell us anything about the benefits of chlorophyll in the human diet. The first is a study on rats and the second one actually makes a point of noting that the evidence it's reviewing does not pertain to chlorophyll consumed orally. Thus neither of them say anything about the human diet. 
I'll fix it unless there's any objections. 
Also, do we have a source for that bollocks about chickens' egg production being doubled by wheatgrass consumption? One that hasn't been written by someone trying to sell wheatgrass products.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.102.43.72 (talk) 09:10, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chlorophyll in human diet 

message: I have been trying to find a source for the claim at the start of the history section:
Wheat grass can be traced back in history over 5000 years, to ancient Egypt and perhaps even early Mesopotamian civilizations. It is purported that ancient Egyptians found sacred the young leafy blades of wheat and prized them for their positive effect on their health and vitality. 
It seems there are plenty of things linking wheat to Egypt, but as for wheatgrass and, specifically, the historical health-use claim, things are trickier. The two links cited by the tertiary source given have both decayed.
One of them doesn't mention it and the the other (presumably the intended reference) is by "Dr Wheatgrass", a "wheatgrass based skin care products" retailer. The last available version of it is a bunch of links, of which I've tried some but don't see much point as I doubt it would qualify as a reliable source.
There are a bunch of health sites which say similar things but all use phrasing very similar to Wikipedia's own, were put up later than the edit, and give no other related information, mentioning Egypt and Mesopotamia only tangentially. This is also the case for the one post-edit reference found on Google Books. There is also one from before the edit, in The Complete Guide to Growing and Using Wheatgrass, but since it is not a history text, references the claim only once, does not provide a source, and includes a disclaimer about the possible inaccuracy of its contents, I am happy to discard it.
I think the claim is apocryphal, and have taken it down until someone can provide a real source. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 22:57, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "5000 year-old History"