Pass the Grass
If a Lawrence company meets its goal, dinner conversations everywhere will include a request to "Pass the grass."
What? Eat clippings from a freshly mowed lawn or graze like a heifer?
Not exactly.
What company officials want is for people to eat wheat grass, a natural dietary supplement called one of the fastest-growing health foods in the industry.
Wheat grass is the young wheat plant in its green, pre-sprout stage. Pines International, the local manufacturer of the product, harvests the plant, turning it into tablets and powder. Consumers then eat it for its high nutrient content and convenience—swallowing six tablets is like eating a quarter pound of spinach.
Eating wheat grass as a natural vitamin isn’t a new phenomenon—the practice originated in the 30s. But health food enthusiasts rediscovered it within the past decade, claiming it detoxifies the body and builds up the immune system.
Like many other health foods, wheat grass recently found a home in California where stars like Burgess Meredith, Joni Mitchell and Lindsay Wagner reportedly drink it daily in juice form.
But watching wheat grass become a California health fad hasn’t been easy for two Kansans who harvested the product long before it was considered hip on the West Coast. Ron Seibold and Steve Malone, who started Pines in 1976 on a limited budget, say their plan was never to introduce a fly-by-night health food to the market. Instead, they wanted to provide a Kansas-grown, natural dietary supplement to consumers. And, they hoped to raise enough capital to start a non-profit foundation aimed at supporting organic farming and rural development.
But while Seibold and Malone took 13 years to build the company’s annual sales to the million-dollar mark, California and Japanese wheat grass firms used big-money promotional campaigns to earn that much in a matter of weeks.
"We were incredibly upset," Seibold said.
What upset them, they said, was that other companies cashed in on wheat grass while disregarding independent research on the food. Other companies, Seibold said, grow their wheat grass indoors on flats and ignore the fact that research states wheat grass is nutrient-rich when grown outdoors and harvested just before the plant begins its reproductive cycle.
"It’s incredible," Malone said, "growing wheat grass in California is like growing oranges in Kansas."
After competing companies came out with their version of wheat grass, Pines began an aggressive campaign to educate people on their product. They traveled around the country to food trade shows, taking plants grown under natural and artificial conditions so they could point out the difference in color.
"The naturally grown plants are rich and green and leafy, like they’re supposed to be," Malone said. "You really notice a difference."
While they admit their crusade has been tough, they can joke about the reactions they received when they first visited trade shows. Ironically, many people scoffed at the Kansas product saying they preferred to get their wheat from California. And for Seibold, who was raised on a farm outside Hays, that wasn’t easy to hear.
"But finally, finally people are coming around," he said with a smile.
So far wheat grass has appealed mainly to health food fanatics, people who probably don’t need it as much as the general population, Seibold said. Actually, their goal in manufacturing the product was for the average consumer to include it in his or her regimen like any other store-bought dietary supplement.
"What we like to tell people is to go ahead and have your sanchos and your tacos but you need your greens so just take a few wheat grass pills with the meal," Malone explained.
Because wheat grass is high in chlorophyll, beta-carotene, Vitamin K and fiber, Pines markets the product as an inexpensive substitute for green vegetables, like spinach or broccoli.
"Contrary to what most people think," Malone said, "a couple tablespoons of green beans a day just isn’t going to cut it."
Coupled with the product’s instant fad status came claims of rejuvenation and sky-rocketing bouts of energy. But Seibold and Malone say that would only happen with their product if a person’s diet was extremely deficient in vitamins and minerals before taking wheat grass.
"If their body desperately needed the vitamins, they may notice an immediate difference. If it is supplementing a good diet, then they may not feel anything," Seibold said.
"The point is not to cure ailments but to help people who are deficient in many nutrients."
Seibold first got the idea for his company after reviewing several hundred personal testimonies and published articles on the benefits of dehydrated wheat grass as a dietary supplement. Growing up on a wheat farm sparked his interest in the research, most of which was published between 1932 and 1955.
After earning a master’s degree in social psychology from Colorado State University, Seibold was working in a sheltered workshop in Hays where he met Malone and started planning Pines. Together they recruited 200 investors who contributed $8,000 to the company. When they started out, any services rendered were paid in company stock.
They rallied interest in their product by driving around the country in a dilapidated van, leaving their goods at any health food store they found.
"We started out the hard way," Seibold said, "without a lot of capital."
Now Pines sells its wheat grass products to every state and 12 foreign countries. Nearly all the company’s dividends made on the stock go to the Wilderness Community Education Foundation. A foundation Seibold and Malone started that grants funds for research and education in natural farming, foods, health and community development.
"That’s been my goal all along," Seibold said, "to start something like that."
While wheat grass today is eaten by health-food enthusiasts around the world, it got its start as a dietary supplement during the depression.
It was first publicly researched and tested by Charles F. Schnabel, a former science teacher and mill feed chemist, who lost his job in the Depression. The Kansas City man was broke and jobless for five years and fed grass to his six children. According to a report in the Buffalo New York Courier Express dated June 1, 1942, Schnabel fed grass to his family for 11 years and no one ever suffered a serious illness or a decayed tooth.
Schnabel, who was given an honorary degree from Rockhurst College for his grass research, showed that 12 pounds of powdered grass contained more vitamins than 340 pounds of vegetables and fruits.
He reasoned that if spring grass was good for livestock and poultry, it ought to be good for humans as well—provided it could be preserved in its green and tender state the year round.
He first decided to feed it to his family after an experiment he conducted showed that dehydrated cereal grass added to the diets of his chickens increased egg production between 100 and 300 percent. For his family, he ground up the grass in a sausage grinder and added it to milk and other foods.
At the urging of Schnabel, the Quaker Oats company began producing cereal grass tablets for humans in 1935. The company said 20 wheat grass tablets provided the minimum daily requirement of most vitamins and minerals.
Over the next several years, hundreds of studies published in medical and scientific journals, all showed positive results using cereal grass tablets. In 1939, the American Medical Association accepted dehydrated cereal grass as a human food and sales soared. By the mid-40s, nearly every pharmacy in the United States carried the tablets.
But the demand for dehydrated cereal grass declined when more concentrated vitamins were introduced in the 1950s.
"That was when things like One-A-Day came out," Seibold said. "And people thought why take 20 when I can take one?"
When Seibold and Malone started Pines, they based initial research on independent studies that were conducted on Schnabel’s early findings.
"At first people were skeptical," Malone said. "They’d say, ‘But isn’t that what you feed cows?’"
"Now," he added, "all kinds of people are trying it."
AS SEEN IN Topeka Capitol-Journal, August 24, 1989 / Written by Nancy Stoetzer
