Your road to health has many turns and twists full of interesting sites to visit. A common site that health practitioners and their patients pass through is the courthouse.
When I put some fresh cut wheatgrass in my handy dandy wheat grass juicer, I wonder how many know the recent history behind wheat grass juicing.
Wheatgrass to establish its potential benefits had to visit the legal institutions as well. Knowing the history behind popularity of any health claim helps you decide if the benefits are real.
Ann Wigmore, an immigrant from Lithuania develop the wheatgrass diet in Boston. Her central belief was based on observing dogs and cats when they are sick.
Anyone who has dogs and outdoor cats could easily verify this. They love to chew on grass. If they are sick, they munch on the grass until they throw up. In the case of my very sick rottweilers, I had to stop him before he ate the grass and threw up the medication that he needed for his arthritis.
Observations alone do not validate an experience. Ask every human being who observed the sun every day rising in the east and setting in the west. They believed by observation that the sun revolves around the earth.
Ann Wigmore also had some interpretation from the Bible to support her claims that appealed to religious groups who love nature.
I also find it absolutely fascinating that how easily we skip the hard and time consuming steps that takes an observation from the realm of theory to the realm of proven facts by questioning, theorizing, testing, verifying and having the results duplicated by others who are equally dedicated.
Many times we try to take this short cut by our interpretation of a religious text.
Ann’s methods were hardly scientific.
However, I watch TV commercials promoting the latest FDA approved drug which a few months later lead the trend in lawsuits for the harm they did.
FDA follows hard scientific approaches.
Based on what I see, I’m not sure how much Ann Wigmore contributed to the health of those who learned about wheatgrass diet.
But I do know that Massachusetts Attorney General sued her for claiming that her program eliminated the need for insulin in diabetics. That is a dangerous and irresponsible claim to make without hard scientific evidence supporting it. Diabetes is a serious disease it could be very painful both emotionally and physically.
And Wigmore retracted her claims in 1988. However, the attitude toward claiming medical knowledge forced Ann another return visit to the courthouse for the claims that her “energy enzyme soup” could cure AIDS.
In most health related decisions at some point, you have to reach into your pocket. It doesn’t matter if you buy wheat grass seeds to grow yourself, or buy organic wheat grass from a local farmer or health food store. Or if you buy one masticating juicer model which is slow or another that is vertical. You’ll be spending money. Before you do, at least check the history behind what you are supposed to be getting.