By Lee Davis, CFSP
Last week, I attended a training webinar with Erin Eddy, Division Manager – East, for Hamilton Beach. Among the products she discussed was Hamilton Beach’s new HWG800 Wheat Grass Juicer. It is a high quality machine that extracts 5 oz. of wheat grass juice per minute. That’s great when you consider the typical serving is only an ounce. The machine is commercially rated and NSF approved, with food zone parts made of sanitary and highly durable Type 304 stainless steel. It has forward and reverse controls and the usual custom tools for easy disassembly and cleaning.
So you might ask, “Why do I need a wheat grass juicer?” Well, aside from being the hottest trend in the health food and juice bar arena, wheat grass juice has a ton of great health benefits. One ounce is said to contain the same nutritional value as 2 pounds of produce. It contains all the minerals known to man, many important vitamins, and is rich in protein and amino acids. A quick search of the internet reveals dozens of health benefits attributed to wheat grass juice.
Understanding the health benefits, your next question might be, “Can’t I use a regular juicer.” The answer is simply “No.” Wheat grass has a much higher fiber to liquid ratio than most fruits and vegetables. It needs to be ground more completely, and under higher pressure, to extract the juice. Your typical juicer may yield a few drops, but it would be an inefficient and costly proposition, and may burn out the motor of your general purpose juicer.
A skeptic asked: “If wheat grass juice is so good for you, then why don’t people just eat it.” Well, some animals do. Consider the cow. Free ranging, he lives primarily on grasses, uses a four compartment stomach to digest and ferment his daily intake, and must regurgitate and re-chew his meals to extract the nutrition from the fibrous grasses. Or consider the rabbit. In the wild, he too lives primarily on grasses. But rather that regurgitating his meals for further processing, he waits until they’ve passed out the other end in the form of pellets, before re-eating them to give the partially digested grasses another pass through his system. Personally, I’d rather juice.
If you’re an operator, the best reason to own a wheat grass juicer is increased profits. My local small town smoothie shop and juice bar gets $4.50 for a shot of wheat grass juice, and a $3.00 upcharge if you want to add a shot into any of their other juice drinks. I’m sure prices are much higher at key locations in major cities. But either way, at five ounces per hour, a busy juice bar could easily recoup the cost of a machine in less than a month. And what’s better, depending on the type and location of your operation, you may even be able to grow your own wheat grass or source it locally. It’s a green solution.
