Stop eating my food.
Are you a cow?
You might think that's a strange question to ask someone, but if you have been buying most greens powders with ingredients such as wheatgrass, barley grass, and alfalfa, you've been eating cow food.
Greens without the grass
But aren't those greens super nutritious? While they have a bit of nutrition, they are in those greens powders because they are super inexpensive to grow and produce. This allows companies to make large tubs of powders for next to nothing and have huge profit margins.
More nutrient-dense plants like lacinato (dinosaur) kale, Swiss chard, spinach, collard greens, and mustard greens have much more nutrient density than grass but are much more expensive, so it's more profitable to fill up the tubs with grass and just a tiny pinch of the more nutrient-dense green foods.
While cows love the taste of grass, most people don't. That's why most green powders are filled with questionable sweeteners and flavorings (artificial and "natural") to cover up the grassy taste.
In addition, most green powders are spray-dried or dried at high temperatures, which can lead to an off taste and a significant loss of the nutritional value of the foods. This can damage the greens, and then companies need to add emulsifiers, such as lecithin (often extracted with hexane and acetone), to make the powder mix easier.
Greens powders should be free of added sweeteners or flavorings ("natural" flavorings are not natural) and gently dried at low temperatures.
Most greens powders add fillers like FOS, Inulin, flax, and pectin. While they may claim benefits from those ingredients, they are just cheap fillers that allow the companies to use far fewer green foods, greatly increasing their profits. Look for green powders free of fillers and that only contain green foods and other vegetables or fruits.
Grass Free Greens Powder
Simplicity is best for green food powders, but unfortunately, most manufacturers have decided that marketing is more important than making a great product.
Many products contain twenty or more ingredients. One popular brand has over fifty ingredients. While this may look good on the label, the amounts of nearly all ingredients are too low to be beneficial or have any effect. This is an example of a common practice in the supplement industry called fairy dusting. While it is excellent for marketing purposes, it's just a waste of money for the people purchasing it.
Look for green powders with only a handful of ingredients to ensure you get enough of each to benefit. Your health is too important to leave up to the marketing departments of big-name companies like Nestle.
Farm to table greens powders
Do you know where all of the ingredients in your green food come from? I'm not talking about the country of origin but the actual farms. Every country has good and bad farms, so knowing where the ingredients are grown is very important.
The best greens powder producers tell you where each ingredient comes from, right down to the farm. Check out our Farm To Bottle Project to learn more about the importance of knowing where all the ingredients in your supplements come from. A company should be proud of its sources, not try to hide them.
Most companies do not grow or produce their ingredients. They buy bulk powders from middlemen. These middlemen often combine ingredients from various suppliers in many different places, making it impossible to know where the ingredients come from or how they were grown.
Look for greens powders from companies that grow and dry their greens or get them directly from the farmers, not bulk powders from middlemen that they slap their name on.
The quality of the ingredients matters greatly. Many companies use old, yellow, and brown leaves that lack nutritional value but are cheap and great for marketing and profits. It does not matter if the ingredients have no real value left; they can still be listed as an ingredient on the label.
Another common practice is to use only commonly discarded parts, like stems, which have very little nutritional value. However, using just the stems is very profitable and adds lots of bulk. Companies can still list Swiss chard as an ingredient, even if they use the stems and none of the leaves. However, the buyer pays the penalty because they get a green powder with little nutritional value. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell from the label whether the company just used stems.
You want your greens powder to be made with freshly harvested whole greens, not just the stems, which are processed and dried quickly after harvesting to have the highest nutritional value.
Most nutrients hate light, which causes them to lose their nutritional value. Green powders should be packaged in dark containers, not clear ones, to prevent the loss of essential nutrients and compounds.
Greens powder without fillers and additives
We are very excited to offer a number of Greens Without The Grass powders so you can get the most nutrient-dense green foods without the grasses, fillers, sweeteners, and flavorings found in nearly all greens powders.
We grew tired of seeing green products full of grass, fillers, sweeteners, and flavorings. We were sick of companies refusing to tell us where the ingredients came from. We wanted something better.
All the green foods and vegetables used in the products are grown using biodynamic, organic, and regenerative agriculture on small family farms. No synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fungicides are ever used, and every ingredient is non-GMO. These farms represent everything good farming should be.
Soon after harvesting, the greens are washed to remove debris, dirt, and leaves that do not meet strict standards.
Different greens require different processing methods in order to help you get the most nutrition from your powders.
For example, certain greens contain lots of goitrogens and oxalates, so steaming and blanching them before gently drying, dramatically reduces the amount of those present.
Other greens may not have lots of oxalates and goitrogens so they would not require those steps.
Using the correct method for each green is the best way to go, rather than a one-size-fits-all method.
After drying, the greens are gently milled and packaged. That's it!
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 grassiness or grittiness. One heaping teaspoon supplies a whole serving of dark, leafy green vegetables.
They mix easily into smoothies or other beverages without emulsifiers like lecithin. You can also bake with them or add them to sauces to easily increase the nutritional content.
They are the easiest way to get your greens every day without cooking or cleaning up. Plus, unlike those greens and containers of spring mix sitting in the back of your fridge waiting to be thrown away, Greens Without The Grass powders will last for over a year in your cabinet, provided they are kept cool and dry.
We continue to search for more green powders that meet all of the standards and will add them to our shop as we find them.
Greens without the grass support
If you have questions about greens powders, feel free to email us at info@rooted-nutrition.com, and we will be happy to answer any questions you have.