Greens Without The Grass
Grass is for cows!
Are you a cow?
You might think that's a strange question to ask someone, but if you buy most green food powders, you're eating cow food.
The main ingredient in nearly all green powders is grasses, like alfalfa, wheatgrass, and barley grass.
But aren't those grasses super nutritious?
While they do have a bit of nutrition, the real reason they are in those green drink powders is that they are super cheap to grow and produce.
This allows companies to produce large tubs of green powder for next to nothing and have huge profit margins.
More nutrient-dense plants like lacinato (dinosaur) kale, spinach, collard greens, mustard greens, beet greens, and Swiss chard are much more expensive, so it's more profitable for them to fill up the container with grass and just put a pinch of these greens in.
Grass does not taste good.
While cows might love the taste of grass, most people don't.
That's why most green drink powders are filled with questionable sweeteners and flavorings to cover up that grassy taste.
Most green drinks are spray-dried or dried at high temperatures as well, which can lead to off flavors, requiring even more unwanted ingredients and mixing aids, such as lecithin, to be added. Look for green powders that have been low-temperature dried under 120 degrees for short periods of time.
Look for green powders without added flavorings ("natural" flavorings are not natural at all), sweeteners, emulsifiers (lecithin), and fillers (such as inulin, fos, flax, and pectin).
Simplicity
Many green powders have decided that marketing tops all.
They often contain twenty or more ingredients. One popular brand has over fifty ingredients.
While this might look good on the label, the amounts of each ingredient are too low to actually do anything. This is an all too common practice in the supplement industry called fairy dusting. It makes for great marketing but does nothing for the people consuming it.
Look for green powders with only a handful of ingredients to ensure you are actually getting enough of each ingredient to actually do something.
Sourcing
When you look at the label of a green powder, it can be hard to know where the ingredients come from, and at most, a company might share the country of origin, but that really does not tell you very much.
The best green powder producers tell you where every ingredient comes from, right down to the farm. Check out our Farm to Bottle Project to learn about the importance of knowing exactly where the ingredients in your green powders come from. A company should be proud of its ingredients, not trying to hide where things come from.
Most companies do not produce or grow their own raw materials and often buy from middlemen. These middlemen often combine ingredients from a huge variety of sources, making it impossible to know where the ingredients come from.
Look for green powders from companies that produce their own raw materials that they grow themselves or get directly from the farms, not from middlemen.
Premium Quality
Many companies use old ingredients that lack vitality. These yellow and brown leaves have little to no nutritional value but are great for a company's marketing, but can still be labeled as that ingredient.
Another common practice is to use discarded parts like stems, which have very little nutritional value. While these ingredients will still show on the label as that ingredient, they will not provide you with the nourishment you are looking for. For example, a chard stem has nowhere near the nutritional value of the leaf but can still be labeled as chard.
You want freshly harvested greens without the stems that are processed and dried within hours of harvesting so that the product has the most nutritional value.
Packaging
Greens food powders should be packaged in dark glass to help protect the ingredients from light, which will reduce the nutrient levels.
Glass is also much better for the environment; the less plastic, the better!
Greens Without The Grass
Greens Without The Grass represents the next evolution of green food powders.
We got tired of greens powders full of grass, questionable ingredients, and fillers.
Tired of not knowing where the ingredients in them came from or how they were produced.
We wanted something better.
Sourcing
Greens Without The Grass is a partnership between Rooted Nutrition and The Lone Duck Farm.
Together we grow, process, dry, and package these incredible green foods.
The Ingredients
All of the greens used in the products are grown using regenerative agriculture on the Lone Duck Farm.
No synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides are ever used.
All of the ingredients are non-GMO.
A truly beyond organic farm.
The Process
Within twenty-four hours after the greens are harvested, they are hand processed to remove debris, dirt, stems, and any leaves that are not up to spec. All the non-usable leaves and stems are fed to the friendly farm goats, so nothing is wasted!
Then they are low-temperature air dried, under 120 degrees, to preserve the nutrient and enzyme content.
They are then milled into a fine powder and packed in dark glass jars with metal lids.
That's it!
The Taste
Unlike most green powders, which taste like a freshly mowed lawn or cover up the taste with sweeteners and flavorings, Greens Without The Grass products taste fresh and vibrant with no grassiness or grittiness!
They mix easily into smoothies or other beverages without the use of emulsifiers like lecithin.
One heaping teaspoon provides a full serving of dark leafy green goodness.
It's the easiest way to get your green vegetables every day without having to cook or clean up.
Plus, unlike those greens and containers of spring mix sitting in the back of your fridge, just waiting for you to throw them away, Greens Without The Grass powders will last for over a year in your cabinet, provided they are kept cool and dry.
It's time you had a better green food powder experience!
If you have any questions about our Greens Without The Grass products, send us an email at info@rooted-nutrition.com, and we would be happy to answer all of your questions.
