Post by Swamp Gas on Aug 3, 2004 11:42:42 GMT -5
Interesting Story. Notice Andrew Weil, putting down Wheatgrass. Weil is a big advocate for vaccinations. Also, the Massachusetts attorney general suing Ann Wigmore. Can't have anything compete with Oral Diabetes Medicine and Cancer Industry cash cows?
The Elixir Series Part III
Wheatgrass and San Francisco's true believers
By Amy Moon, Features Editor, SF Gate
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
Once upon a time in San Francisco, there was a happy farm with a red barn and trays of grass growing in the sunshine behind it. It sat right across the street from the Valencia Gardens projects, but this gritty locale didn't stop a steady stream of customers from stopping by Eva Moen's Wheatgrass Farm and Depot for their daily dose of "green sunshine."
Today, the little red barn is boarded up and the cheerful fellowship of wheatgrass-juice aficionados has faded away, but the substance itself has come into a new phase of popularity. Although the history of this potent green fluid is -- like that of all true elixirs -- full of supposed miracles and replete with true believers spreading the gospel to seekers of cures, many of today's wheatgrass-juice guzzlers are regular folk who don't know anything about magic and care only about what the brochure at Jamba Juice promises: that it helps cleanse and detoxify your blood, contributes to making your skin look great, assists in digestion, aids in metabolizing energy and fat and helps bolster your immune system.
But, behind its current vogue simply as a healthful drink, there still exists a community of worshippers who believe wheatgrass can save each of us -- and the world, too. Going back before Eva Moen and continuing to the present, wheatgrass believers are alive and well in the Bay Area, and talking to them makes one wonder whether there really is something to this heady stuff that might change one's life forever, or whether it's just the latest in a long string of health fads and snake oil.
One cannot talk about wheatgrass in the freshly squeezed form we know today without referring to the pioneering efforts of Dr. Ann Wigmore. After using wheatgrass juice to cure herself of various ailments, including gangrene and cancer of the colon, Wigmore opened the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston in 1963. Many among the tens of thousands of people who passed through its portals report being healed of all manner of diseases by her Living Foods Lifestyle, based on drinking wheatgrass juice and eating a raw-food diet.
Wigmore's life mission was to share the Living Food Lifestyle with everyone in the world. She believed that, as she said, "as each person becomes cleaner inside and detoxifies mentally and emotionally, one will be led naturally into wholesome activities that will better nurture oneself, others and the earth."
Out here in San Francisco, though, it was Eva Moen who brought wheatgrass to the people, and she carried Wigmore's legacy forward with the community she gathered around her.
Moen was a charismatic figure, described as a 6-foot-tall Amazon of Norwegian extraction in her late 50s who claimed that wheatgrass cured her of her alcoholism. She was said to have the strength of a man and the energy of a someone less than half her age. In its heyday, during the mid-1990s, her Wheatgrass Farm and Depot -- the main supplier for the entire Bay Area -- produced hundreds of trays of wheatgrass a week.
San Francisco filmmaker Donald Harrison is one of the many people who regularly stopped by Moen's establishment. Initially, Harrison says, he visited the place to research a film about obscure businesses, but he was immediately drawn in by the passion of the people who frequented the farm. "I was struck by how the place was like a church or house of worship," adds Harrison, who is also assistant director of development and marketing for the San Francisco-based Film Arts Foundation. "There was a cultlike fanaticism about the people. Most had been fighting illness and saw wheatgrass as part of their savior."
"Grass People" is now the working title of his film. And, even though he stumbled across the farm after Moen had already gone and the farm was in its decline, Harrison started communicating with the elixir's advocate through letters and heard second hand about her strong presence. "Eva Moen is a wheatgrass evangelist, a true believer," says Harrison. "She is very much into God and believes that wheatgrass is part of what could bring about world peace and could end world hunger."
Harrison adds that the wheatgrass community consists of two distinct groups: people recovering from illness who use it to treat their disease, and others -- like yoga instructors and marathon runners -- who are committed to being extremely healthy. "So, you have this combination of people on both sides of the health spectrum coming together and learning something," he says. The people he met at the wheatgrass farm were genuine and openly friendly, he adds. "I always walked away feeling like I had made a real connection."
Moen influenced many people who were drawn in by her positive energy and her belief in the healing powers of the juice. Lisa Bach, founder of Juicy Lucy's, a pioneering all-organic juice bar and restaurant that opened nine years ago in North Beach, says Moen taught her everything she knows about wheatgrass juice. "She turned me on to it, and she showed me how to juice," adds Bach.
Bach had come back from a three-month yoga hiatus with Ashtanga yoga guru Pattabi Joi, and his edict continued to ring in her mind: "Do your practice, and all good things will come." She quit her corporate job, even though she was six months pregnant, and opened her café, but her connection to Moen pulled her further along her path.
"Just being [at Moen's] and being in the presence of the grass was amazing," Bach says. After a 20-day cleansing diet of 6 ounces of wheatgrass juice per day, she adds, "I never looked better -- I never felt better. It brings up all the toxins in the body. What's stored in your organs are emotions."
The long-haired, exotic-looking Bach, clear eyed and alive, says she runs on vitality. Of wheatgrass juice, she adds, "Only until you have it in your body can you understand what it's like. I can spin circles around any 20-year-old, and I'm 45. I get younger as I get older." Bach believes that drinking wheatgrass changes you. "You let go of a lot of stored things within you," she says. "You become radiant. Your eyes are brighter. It gives you mental clarity. You see clearly and think clearly."
The Elixir Series Part III
Wheatgrass and San Francisco's true believers
By Amy Moon, Features Editor, SF Gate
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
Once upon a time in San Francisco, there was a happy farm with a red barn and trays of grass growing in the sunshine behind it. It sat right across the street from the Valencia Gardens projects, but this gritty locale didn't stop a steady stream of customers from stopping by Eva Moen's Wheatgrass Farm and Depot for their daily dose of "green sunshine."
Today, the little red barn is boarded up and the cheerful fellowship of wheatgrass-juice aficionados has faded away, but the substance itself has come into a new phase of popularity. Although the history of this potent green fluid is -- like that of all true elixirs -- full of supposed miracles and replete with true believers spreading the gospel to seekers of cures, many of today's wheatgrass-juice guzzlers are regular folk who don't know anything about magic and care only about what the brochure at Jamba Juice promises: that it helps cleanse and detoxify your blood, contributes to making your skin look great, assists in digestion, aids in metabolizing energy and fat and helps bolster your immune system.
But, behind its current vogue simply as a healthful drink, there still exists a community of worshippers who believe wheatgrass can save each of us -- and the world, too. Going back before Eva Moen and continuing to the present, wheatgrass believers are alive and well in the Bay Area, and talking to them makes one wonder whether there really is something to this heady stuff that might change one's life forever, or whether it's just the latest in a long string of health fads and snake oil.
One cannot talk about wheatgrass in the freshly squeezed form we know today without referring to the pioneering efforts of Dr. Ann Wigmore. After using wheatgrass juice to cure herself of various ailments, including gangrene and cancer of the colon, Wigmore opened the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston in 1963. Many among the tens of thousands of people who passed through its portals report being healed of all manner of diseases by her Living Foods Lifestyle, based on drinking wheatgrass juice and eating a raw-food diet.
Wigmore's life mission was to share the Living Food Lifestyle with everyone in the world. She believed that, as she said, "as each person becomes cleaner inside and detoxifies mentally and emotionally, one will be led naturally into wholesome activities that will better nurture oneself, others and the earth."
Out here in San Francisco, though, it was Eva Moen who brought wheatgrass to the people, and she carried Wigmore's legacy forward with the community she gathered around her.
Moen was a charismatic figure, described as a 6-foot-tall Amazon of Norwegian extraction in her late 50s who claimed that wheatgrass cured her of her alcoholism. She was said to have the strength of a man and the energy of a someone less than half her age. In its heyday, during the mid-1990s, her Wheatgrass Farm and Depot -- the main supplier for the entire Bay Area -- produced hundreds of trays of wheatgrass a week.
San Francisco filmmaker Donald Harrison is one of the many people who regularly stopped by Moen's establishment. Initially, Harrison says, he visited the place to research a film about obscure businesses, but he was immediately drawn in by the passion of the people who frequented the farm. "I was struck by how the place was like a church or house of worship," adds Harrison, who is also assistant director of development and marketing for the San Francisco-based Film Arts Foundation. "There was a cultlike fanaticism about the people. Most had been fighting illness and saw wheatgrass as part of their savior."
"Grass People" is now the working title of his film. And, even though he stumbled across the farm after Moen had already gone and the farm was in its decline, Harrison started communicating with the elixir's advocate through letters and heard second hand about her strong presence. "Eva Moen is a wheatgrass evangelist, a true believer," says Harrison. "She is very much into God and believes that wheatgrass is part of what could bring about world peace and could end world hunger."
Harrison adds that the wheatgrass community consists of two distinct groups: people recovering from illness who use it to treat their disease, and others -- like yoga instructors and marathon runners -- who are committed to being extremely healthy. "So, you have this combination of people on both sides of the health spectrum coming together and learning something," he says. The people he met at the wheatgrass farm were genuine and openly friendly, he adds. "I always walked away feeling like I had made a real connection."
Moen influenced many people who were drawn in by her positive energy and her belief in the healing powers of the juice. Lisa Bach, founder of Juicy Lucy's, a pioneering all-organic juice bar and restaurant that opened nine years ago in North Beach, says Moen taught her everything she knows about wheatgrass juice. "She turned me on to it, and she showed me how to juice," adds Bach.
Bach had come back from a three-month yoga hiatus with Ashtanga yoga guru Pattabi Joi, and his edict continued to ring in her mind: "Do your practice, and all good things will come." She quit her corporate job, even though she was six months pregnant, and opened her café, but her connection to Moen pulled her further along her path.
"Just being [at Moen's] and being in the presence of the grass was amazing," Bach says. After a 20-day cleansing diet of 6 ounces of wheatgrass juice per day, she adds, "I never looked better -- I never felt better. It brings up all the toxins in the body. What's stored in your organs are emotions."
The long-haired, exotic-looking Bach, clear eyed and alive, says she runs on vitality. Of wheatgrass juice, she adds, "Only until you have it in your body can you understand what it's like. I can spin circles around any 20-year-old, and I'm 45. I get younger as I get older." Bach believes that drinking wheatgrass changes you. "You let go of a lot of stored things within you," she says. "You become radiant. Your eyes are brighter. It gives you mental clarity. You see clearly and think clearly."