• Home
• /
• World
• /
• Gulf

Residents beat the heat with miracle drink

DUBAI - A wonder juice, made out of wheatgrass with a rich content of chlorophyll,

active enzymes and other vitamins might be the right answer for UAE residents to beat the heat, shape up and rejuvenate themselves this summer. Made available for the first time in the UAE at a health food cafeteria in Sharjah from January, the juice is proving to be increasingly popular with residents.

"Wheatgrass juice is a very popular option in the US and in Australia where it's freely available at all juice bars," explained Mr S.K. Suneja, a Dubai-based yoga expert and the person who first thought of making it available in the UAE. He along with his nutritionist wife, Vanita Suneja, introduced it at their healthfood cafeteria in Sharjah opposite the Sharjah City Centre. And from there onwards, the results have been purely overwhelming. "Initially, we used to have 10-15 requests every day but now the numbers have increased phenomenally," Mr Suneja explained.

When wheatgrass juice was first made available in Sharjah, Mr Suneja said that it was being sourced from Australia but now it is locally grown. "We have some people here who are growing the grass for us and we are selling it along with a prescription, so that people can buy the grass and make the juice at home according to the prescription. When it is served at the cafeteria, we make the juice ourselves," he explained.

Wheatgrass juice traces its roots to the studies sponsored by Charles Kettering , the former chairman of the Board of General Motors (headquartered in the US) and conducted by a group of medical doctors about the healing effects of chlorophyll, the principal content of wheatgrass juice.

Subsequent studies by Dr Ann Wigmore in Boston outlined the medicinal value of 4,700 varieties of grass but pointed to wheatgrass as the most effective of all. She started the Ann Wigmore Institute in Boston and has since spread the message of grasses all over the world. In 1958, her experiments at the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston concluded that the body could act as its own physician when provided with proper tools (living organic nourishment) used in the way that nature intended: unprocessed and uncooked.

Dr Wigmore also reported from her studies that 15 pounds of wheatgrass is nutritionally equivalent to 350 pounds of the choicest vegetables since it absorbs 92 of the known 102 minerals from the soil. Three ounces of wheatgrass juice often termed as the water of life, nectar or green blood was found to be nutritionally equivalent to over two pounds of vegetables and taken twice a day by adults, it can prove to be an effective routine maintenance of good health.

• World
• UAE