Cereal grass

The grass family includes all the major cereals, such as wheat, maize, rice, barley, and oats, and most of the minor grains as well, such as rye, common millet, finger millet, teff, and many others that are less familiar.

The cereal grass barley was domesticated about 10,000 years before the present in the Fertile Crescent and became a founder crop of Neolithic agriculture. The Chinese honored the healing properties of wheat grass as far back as 2800 BC. The Romans and Egyptians have similar ceremonies for worshipping cereal grasses and grains. It has been said that people in the ancient Middle East ate the green leaf tips of the wheat plant as a delicacy.

Bottled, dehydrated cereal grass has been a popular food supplement for people in the United States since the early 1930s.

The consumption of wheatgrass in the Western world began in the 1930s as a result of experiments by Charles F. Schnabel and his attempts to popularize the plant. Schnabel, an agricultural chemist, conducted his first experiments with young grasses in 1930, when he used fresh cut grass in an attempt to nurse dying chickens back to health. The hens not only recovered, but they produced eggs at a higher rate than healthy hens. 
Cereal grass

History of cereal grass

Cereal grass has been around for a long time-thousands of years. Young cereal plants were valued in ancient times.

It has been said that people in the ancient Middle East ate the green leaf tips of the wheat plant as a delicacy.

Archeological evidence shows that in some areas, such as the Near East, the collection of wild grains for food ceased soon after the beginning of farming.

In the other part of the world, wild grains have continued to be important foods to the current day. In these areas wild grass are still important resources, sometimes for hunter gatherers, but more often as a supplementary resource for farmers.

Eating immature foods including cereal grass shoots adheres to the principle practiced in the ancient traditions of the Far East and the health clinics of Europe and America: immature foods keep a person young.

Wheat is the world’s largest cereal grass crop, second as a staple only to rice. It is believed to have been growing since the time of the Old Stone Age.

While rye is a cereal grass that is second only to wheat in world popularity for bread baking. It may have originated in southwest Asia, although recorded history first mentions it as a grass found in northern Europe.

It was considered a weed in early Greece but became popular during the days of the Roman Empire.

For barley grass, agronomist place it as being cultivated as early as 7000 BC. Roman gladiators ate barley for strength and stamina.
History of cereal grass