Jan162012

Miracle Greens Review

By admin on January 16, 2012

 

Miracle Greens Review

Miracle greens is one of my favorite green powder formulas. Not only does it have a great range of healthy green ingredients, but it’s super inexpensive as well. If you’ve not already gone to the green powder cost comparison page, definitely give it a visit before you leave.  If you have been to that page, then you know that Miracle Greens powder is one of the cheapest powders on the market, which is surprising when you consider how many great ingredients it has in its formula.  Most notably, Miracle Greens is full of anti-inflammatory compounds:

Anti-Inflammatory Ingredients

  • Mangosteen
  • Turmeric
  • Ginger

These three ingredients in Miracle Greens are great because they’re all powerful anti-inflammatory herbs.  In the modern diet, there’s an onslaught of pro-inflammatory compounds that we eat each day.  I don’t have time to go into the details in this post, but you’ll have to take our word for it.  Having a green powder with multiple anti-inflammatory herbs is a great way to battle the onslaught of all the artificial compounds that most of us eat on a regular basis.  Because of the anti-inflammatory compounds, that makes this powder especially great for people suffering with inflammatory conditions like arthritis.

Other Ingredients

  • Full Range of Grasses
  • Full Range of Algae
  • Full Range of Antioxidant Juices
  • Natural Herbal Extracts
  • Plant Enzymes
  • Probiotics

Bio-Availability

Miracle Greens is about as complete as any green powder formula on the market.  And because of the fact that it contains both probiotics and digestive enzymes, it’s highly bio-available.  These will help the stomach digest and process the highly complex and rich nutrients in the green powder. The only reason why we gave this powder 4 instead of 5 stars is that some other green powder formulas, such as Garden of Life’s powder, have special processes like partial fermentation and pre-digestion that further helps the body to digest and absorb the highly complex nutrients found in green powders.  So, because some powders have special focus on bio-availability, those powders are what we reserve the 5 out of 5 star mark for.  Miracle Greens is still a highly bio-available powder, but just not as much as some of the others.  But for the price, it’s definitely worth it.

Posted in Leave a Comment

Jan152012

Green Vibrance Review

By admin on January 15, 2012

 

 

 

 

Green Vibrance Review

Green Vibrance is the oldest and one of the very best green powder formulas out on the market.  Vibrant Health has been around for over two decades and are consistently refining their formula to bring you the best ingredients at the lowest cost.  The one great thing that we love about Green Vibrance is their full disclosure policy.  They list every single ingredient in the formula and the amount of each ingredient.  That’s pretty important since green powders often contain lots of fillers that they hide under the label of “Proprietary Formula.”  Green Vibrance is a bit more expensive than some of the other great brands like Miracle Greens, but it’s definitely worth it.  Here are some of the notable ingredients:

Green Vibrance Ingredients

  • 25 Billion Cultures of Probiotics Per Serving from 12 Different Strains
  • Digestive Enzymes
  • Large Range of Grasses
  • Large Range of Algae
  • Adaptogenic Herbs
  • Herbal Extracts

Green Vibrance really does have an awesome spread of ingredients.  For my money, it’s either Green Vibrance or Miracle Greens.  Both powders are very complete, very bio-available, and reasonably priced.  The only thing they lack is proprietary processing that some of the other powders have that render the powders even more bio-available.  But these powders usually come at a premium.

Adaptogenic Herbs

We mentioned adaptogenic herbs in the list of ingredients.  Adaptogens are compounds that help the body more cope with its environment.  They can heighten a person’s energy level and focus when needed, but also calm a person and help to deal with stress and anxiety.  Adaptogens have been shown to have dualistic properties like that, which can be very valuable.  They can give you energy and focus when you need it, and calm your nerves and banish anxiety.  The three most notable adaptogenic herbs in Green Vibrance are:

  • Schizandra Berry Extract
  • Eleutherococcus Senticosus Root Extract
  • Suma Root Extract

We don’t have time to go into the specifics here, but if you want to do a little bit more research on the benefits of adaptogens, feel free.  Green Vibrance has a little bit of everything, covering all the bases of what a person could want or need from a green powder combination.  Definitely give them a try.

Posted in Leave a Comment

Dec032011

Amazing Grass Green Superfood Review

By admin on December 3, 2011

 

 

 

 

Amazing Grass Green Superfood Review

You might think from the star values we assigned to Green Superfood in this review indicate that it’s a bad green powder.  That’s not the case.  We just feel like for the money, there are better green powder combinations out there.  Green Superfood has all the bare bones components that you look for in a green powder including an assortment of grasses and algae, probiotics and digestive enzymes.  But there aren’t any herbal extract that I like to see in a green powder combination, and there isn’t a huge probiotic content.  Their probiotic blend is pretty basic, especially when compared to powders like Green Vibrance which has 25 billion cultures per serving from 12 different strains.  The one great thing we will say for this powder is that they don’t use soy lecithin as a filler, which is pretty common in green powders.  That being said though, they have quite a high fiber content, which can also be considered a filler.  All in all, for the money, we think that you can get a more complete mix of ingredients.  However, if you like a powder whose main ingredient is high quality wheatgrass, then you ought to give this powder additional consideration.

Antioxidants

This powder has a great blend of antioxidants.  They use ingredients such as:

  • Organic Acai Berry
  • Organic Maca
  • Organic Carrot
  • Organic Beet
  • Green Tea Extract

I think that the antioxidant properties is where this powder really shines.  Wheatgrass has powerful antioxidants and is a highly alkalinizing compound.  When you combine the fact that this powder is wheatgrass based, plus has a high amount of great antioxidants, then this powder might be the right way to go for you.  It really just depends on what you’re looking for.  To say that this powder is incomplete might more properly be said that this powder has a specific emphasis on antioxidants and alkaline boosting compounds.

Who This Powder is For

  • People Who Want Lots of Antioxidants and Immune System Boosting Greens
  • People Who Want a Powder on the Cheaper End of the Spectrum

Posted in Tagged , , Leave a Comment

Dec022011

Types of Edible Grass

By admin on December 2, 2011

Types of Edible Grass

There are a number of different types of edible grass that have become very popular in recent days.  Edible grass, also called nutritional grass and cereal grass, is the young green plant that quickly grows into a cereal grain.  While wheatgrass has certainly become the most popular of these grasses, there are a number of other grasses that have some great benefits as well including alfalfa grass, barley grass, and oat grass.  Edible grasses have the great advantage of being very easy and cheap to produce, unlike other healthy green powders which can have very complex production processes.  Take the chlorella algae for example, which has an indigestible cell wall that needs to be cracked in order for the stomach to access the nutrients.  Companies use specific sonic frequencies and other methods to achieve this, which ads to the cost and labor of getting the algae ready for consumption.  Grasses are not nearly as complex to produce, but you still need to be a bit careful.  Some grasses and growing methods are better than others.

Wheatgrass and Wheatgrass Kits

Many people like going the route of growing their own wheatgrass using a personal wheatgrass kit.  This is a great way of getting chlorophyll into your diet.  Wheatgrass is high in chlorophyll and can help oxygenate the blood and detoxify the body.  But while this method yields a really cheap and easy way of producing a high quality grass, it’s a bit lacking in nutrient content.  Most of these kits don’t allow the root system of the grass to really develop, and depending on the soil, the grass can grow with little vitamin or mineral content.  So while you’re getting a good dose of chlorophyll, you aren’t getting a whole lot of anything else except fiber.  Buying wheatgrass powder on the other hand from a quality distributor like the product we reviewed in the last post can be can be a bit expensive though.  So if you’re really sold on the idea of wheatgrass, you may want to do a bit of research on how to grow your own, using a higher quality environment than a cheap plastic tray and some dirt.  Another great edible grass is alfalfa grass.

Alfalfa Grass

Alfalfa grass is actually my favorite type of edible grass.  It has a super high protein content, which is nice, and lots of other nutrients.  Alfalfa grass has a root system that can stretch down 20 feet into the soil, giving it the ability to soak up tons of trace minerals from the earth.  If alfalfa is grown in high quality soil, it’ll be loaded with all kinds of highly bio-available minerals.  Hopefully you can see how a grass with a 20 foot root system will be much more nutrient dense than a wheat grass kit grown in a few inches of poor soil and water on the kitchen ledge.

Barley Grass

Barley grass is also high in protein and mineral content.  As with alfalfa grass, the environment in which barley grass grows is very important.  With good soil, barley grass can yield some amazing benefits.  Here are some of the basics of barley grass.  Barley grass is can have up 1 times more calcium than cow’s milk, up to 5 times more iron than in spinach, and up to 7 times the Vitamin C in oranges.  That should sound really surprising considering that milk is known for calcium, spinach is known for iron, and oranges are known for vitamin C.  Because alfalfa grass and barley grass are comparable, I like to take both.  That way I get the unique benefits of each.

Oat Grass

Oat grass has similar benefits to alfalfa and barley grass.  There’s not a whole lot different about this style of grass except that its vitamin and mineral profile is slightly different.  Though it doesn’t have as much protein content as the other two, it’s nutrient dense when grown in a good environment.  A good practice is to vary your intake between the four different types of grasses.  That way, you’re getting the benefits of all of them.  Since each grass has specific strengths and benefits, it’s nice to mix things up a bit in order to achieve the benefits of each.

Posted in Tagged , , , Leave a Comment

Dec022011

Wheatgrass Powder Review

By admin on December 2, 2011

 

 

 

 

Wheatgrass Powder Review

Wheatgrass is an awesome edible grass, definitely the most popular edible grass.  There are a lot of different distributors of wheatgrass powder, and some are better than others.  There are a lot of bulk powders that are produced in China, and may or may not have high quality standards.  I personally don’t like taking supplements produced in China because China is notorious for adding fillers to their products.  And many of the fillers they use can cause side effects.  Because wheatgrass is so popular, there are a lot of distributors, so it’s important not to just buy the cheapest powder you can find.  But the higher quality brands are a bit expensive.  But before we get into that, lets run through some of the benefits of wheatgrass.

Benefits of Wheatgrass

Wheatgrass is an amazing source of both chlorophyll and plant proteins.  Wheatgrass contains all of the essential amino acids and most of the non-essential amino acids that the human body uses, making it a near complete protein.  That’s difficult to find from a plant source.  Like the other grasses, wheatgrass is nutrient dense, containing lots of vitamins and trace minerals.  Because of the high chlorophyll content, wheatgrass boosts red blood cell count and also lowers blood pressure.  It helps the body to cleanse and detox and boosts the body’s alkalinity.  The other edible grasses have similar effects, but wheatgrass is particularly good at detoxing the body and boosting oxygenation of the blood.

Cost

For some reason, high quality wheatgrass powder is a bit expensive.  If you check the cost comparison page, wheatgrass runs about $2 an ounce, which is twice the price of high quality alfalfa grass.  Don’t get me wrong, I really love wheatgrass.  But for the cost, I’d rather buy a combination green powder that has not only grasses, but algae, herbal extracts, and probiotics.  For $2 an ounce, you can get a high quality combination green powder.  Most green powder combinations will have wheatgrass and most of the other edible grasses in their formulas, plus you get lots of other really healthy superfoods and other green ingredients.  So definitely check out a few of them before you leave and see if you can’t find one that you really like.

Posted in Tagged , , , 4 Comments