You already know that drinking wheatgrass juice is healthy, but did you know that wheatgrass juice and juice in general is becoming very popular? The Next Big Thing? One of the top 10 new business trends for the new century as reported by Entrepreneur Magazine? Soon, juice joints will be popping up everywhere like Starbucks coffee shops. “We grow our own wheatgrass,” is the claim to fame of Jugo Juice, a chain of juice bars in Canada. The brains behind Jugo Juice, two former Starbucks baristas, spotted the trend and plan to market this Next Big Thing to the same gourmet coffee-swilling crowd that bought the last Big Thing. “Will it be mocha latte grande today or rhubarb wheatgrass?”

Making a big thing about juice won’t be cheap though. Did you expect it to be? A wheatgrass concoction can cost $5.00 and more. But don’t despair if you are one of those unfortunates on a budget or where a juice joint hasn’t popped yet. You can grow and juice wheatgrass at home. It’s easy and inexpensive.

What you will need to get started:

Wheat. Wheat is that cereal grain that we do so much with already: flour, bread, pasta, sprouts, and cake. You can grow grass with it too. Wheatgrass grows from whole wheat “berries.” Organic, hard red winter wheat berries that haven’t been treated with chemicals or oxygen absorbers are the best wheat berries to use for growing wheatgrass. The berry is really a seed, alive but dormant, so it needs oxygen in storage. 4,000-year-old wheat from Egyptian tombs has been known to grow so it probably doesn’t need very much oxygen. Health food stores and natural food co-ops where you can buy in bulk are the best bet for finding the wheat berries. Clerks might not know if the wheat has been treated. Buy it and try it anyway: just get started.

Trays. Wheatgrass will grow in only an inch of soil so you don’t need a large garden area. Thick rigid plastic trays like cafeteria trays or photographic processing trays are good. Cafeteria trays are usually about 10” X 14” and this is a convenient size to work with. Plant nursery seedling trays are another option. Just about anything is worth a try: metal snack trays, pyrex baking dishes, anything that will hold an inch or two of soil. Cardboard is not recommended though. It falls apart after only one use and can be a watering mess. Restaurant suppliers and second hand stores are good sources for trays.

Soil. A good soil mixture for the trays is 50% organic compost or potting soil and 50% peat moss. Mix it thoroughly, breaking up clumps and add a couple of teaspoons of rock dust, dolomite or greensand per tray (optional). If you are a gardener you probably already have a favorite seed starter mix and this will work too. It is best not to use outdoor garden soil because of the bugs and stray weed seeds.

Water. Untreated well water is the best water to use but difficult to obtain for most of us. If your water is heavily chlorinated (can you smell it?) use filtered water or let it set in an open container 24 hours to let the chlorine gas off. A mister bottle and a watering can with a sprinkler head will be handy.

Grow the Grass

1) Soak the wheat berries for 12 hours or overnight. Use one cup of wheat berries per (cafeteria) tray and enough water to cover the berries by about 1-2 inches. Cover or put in a dark place. In hot weather the berries can start to ferment in this amount of time. They will be bubbly, foamy and maybe even smell. If this happens, you can throw them out and start over or plant them anyway. They might grow; wheat seems forgiving of mistakes like these.

2) Plant the wheat berries. Prepare the trays by spreading the soil mixture about 1-2 inches deep or however much the tray will hold. In shallow trays like cafeteria trays, make a trough around the edge and mound the soil slightly in the center. This keeps the water in the trays and prevents overflow accidents. Water the soil well with the mister and spread the soaked wheat berries in a single layer. They can touch but should not be on top of each other. Cover with a thin layer of soil as thin as you can make it. Cover the tray with another tray or several layers of dampened newspaper and plastic over all. Place in a dark cool place.

3) The wheat berries germinate and sprout. For the first 3-5 days uncover the trays daily for fresh air. Check for mold and wipe it off if you find it. Check for moisture and water with the mister if it seems dry. Cover and put the tray back in the cool dark place. You should be seeing roots and sprouts in this timeframe. After 5 days, if there are no sprouts and/or lots of mold, you may have bad seeds or soaked them too long or overwatered or had too much heat for germination.

4) When the sprouts are 1 inch tall, uncover and mist with a dilute liquid seaweed supplement. This supplement step is optional but worth it if you have the seaweed available. Continue to keep the trays uncovered, in indirect sunlight until the blades of grass have grown to 8-10” tall. This may take another week. They need water everyday. Use the sprinkler can for the main watering and mist later if they look wilty. Use the seaweed only in the first days, otherwise the juice may taste like seaweed. Turn the trays if the grass begins to lean in one direction.

Juice the Grass

You will need a serrated knife or pair of scissors, several bowls, shotglasses, measuring cups and a juicer.

Juicers are manual hand-cranked or electric. Electric juicers should be low rpm (not over 50 rpm) because high speed oxidizes the grass and the grass fibers bind. Don’t even try to use a blender. Electric juicers are the only expensive part of this whole process. An electric juicer will pay for itself though if you consider all those $5.00 juice drinks at the juice bar. Hand-cranked models are cheaper but you have to do some work to get your juice.

1) Harvest the wheatgrass with scissors or a knife. Hold a bunch of wheatgrass in one hand and cut as close to the soil as possible with the other hand. Have a bowl handy. The grass is so pretty, green and vibrant. You may not want to cut it but do it anyway.

2) Get the juicer out. You will need a bowl to catch the expelled pulp and shotglasses or measuring cups to hold the juice. Feed the grass into the hopper and either crank or let electricity do the work. Soon a dark green liquid will come out with the pulp coming out separately. The pulp can be run through the juicer again. A light green foam comes out as well making a head on the juice.

3) Clean the juicer right away. It is difficult to clean if left too long.

4) After harvest you have a tray full of grass stubble. There are plenty of things to do with it. Continue to water it and get a second growth to juice again. It is a good addition to compost bins and worm bins. Break the mat of roots and soil into pieces before adding to the bin. You can also feed it to chickens. They love pecking out the berry and getting some fresh greens at the same time. Take the mat of roots, soil and grass stubble out in one piece for the chickens.

Use the Juice

The juice should be used within 30 minutes of harvest and juicing. It starts breaking down and goes bad within 12 hours.

Drink it for a morning energizer, for detoxifying and cleansing. Instead of a vitamin pill from a factory or processing plant drink 1-2 ounces of wheatgrass juice for your vitamins, minerals, enzymes, protein and chlorophyll. You probably won’t be drinking it for the taste. Some people have a hard time getting it down the hatch. One trick is to hold your breath and put a piece of parsley in your mouth. Just think how healthy it is too. That should help. The taste is very grassy (surprise) but has a sweet finish.

Drink it as part of a fast. Wheatgrass juice is an excellent super nutritional addition to a fasting program. Always drink plenty of water while fasting.

Wheatgrass juice can be used in enemas and rectal implants for rapid cleansing. Juice can be used in douches as well.

The expelled pulp and juice can be used in first aid poultices applied to sunburned skin, rashes, boils and cuts.

Wheatgrass juice has cosmetic uses. Use it as a hair conditioner and scalp treatment. Gargle with it for fresh breath and gum health.

Give yourself a facial with wheatgrass juice. First cleanse and steam the skin to open pores. Then apply undiluted fresh juice to the skin with cottonballs. Relax for 5 minutes and rinse.

Take a bath in wheatgrass juice. Usually wheatgrass juice is used undiluted or straight, but for this application diluted is the way to go. Pour a few ounces into the bathwater and make a teabag of pulp to hang.

Throw a wheatgrass party. It is best to invite a mix of people: people who know about wheatgrass but have never tried it and old hands. Introducing people to wheatgrass juice is great entertainment.

Green beer. Instead of using food coloring to make green beer for St. Patrick’s Day, use wheatgrass juice. It doesn’t take much to turn beer a beautiful green color. It’s much healthier than food coloring.

Finally, get in on the new business trend and start your own wheatgrass juice business.

Foot soak: Soothe aches, remove odors and soften rough skin with a foot soak. Add 1/2 cup of epsom salt to a large pan of warm water. Soak feet for as long as it feels right. Rinse and dry.

All you need to do is soak your tired feet in a solution of 3 tablespoons of baking Soda in a basin of warm water. Not only will your feet feel refreshed , your feet will smell fresher and your skin will feel soft and clean.

Eucalyptus, Lime, Lemongrass, Spearmint,

1/2 cup epsom salts
5 drops peppermint extract
3 drops tea tree oil
3 drops lavender

–

Home Lemon Foot Mask

Ingredients:
1 tbsp vodka
1 egg
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 drop lemon essential oil

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend well.
Pour the mixture into a large bowl. Soak your feet in the mixture for
about 15 minutes.
Massage the Mask into your feet if you’d like.
Rinse with plenty of warm water.

Chiquita Bananas

Fresh Fruit, Bloody Wars

Here we have a company whose president was quoted as saying “it’s important that I don’t get too knowledgable about the past” upon taking control of the company in 1975. The previous president, Eli Black, had just left the company by way of leaping out the window of his 44th floor office in the Pan Am Building in New York rather than face prosecution for giving a bribe to the president of Honduras. The dude didn’t even give two weeks notice.

What’s this “past” he didn’t want to think about? Well, there’s the massacre of striking workers in Colombia in 1928, at the hands of the Colombian army and allegedly under the orders of the company. Seriously, how could they top that?

Well, bringing down the democratically elected leader of a South American country by way of a violent coup is one way.

Back in 1951 when they were still called the United Fruit Company, a president by the name of Jacabo Arbenz took office in Guatemala. Among the things that got him elected, the biggest was an ambitious plan that would distribute uncultivated land to over 100,000 peasants in Guatemala. The main obstacle to this plan was the United Fruit Company, who just happened to own the land.

According to their estimates, the land was valued at right around $525,000. When the Guatemalan government made a low ball offer of exactly that fucking amount, United Fruit responded with a completely logical counter offer of $16,000,000. When Arbenz balked, United Fruit reportedly took the term “breakdown in negotiations” to dizzying new heights by asking the CIA to intervene. And boy did they intervene. God-DAMN did they intervene!

Along with other connections in the Eisenhower administration, then CIA head Allen Dulles had previously served on United Fruit’s board of trustees. With that kind of direct access to the highest levels of the government and with McCarthyism in full swing, we imagine the telephone conversation that resulted in the CIA intervening on behalf of United Fruit went something like this:

CIA: “Hello?”

United Fruit: “BANANAS blah blah blah OUR LAND blah blah PEASANTS blah blah COMMUNISTS!”

CIA: **click**

United Fruit: “Hello? Hello?”

**Hears explosions in background, takes cover**

With the CIA on board to help with their cause, United Fruit launched a massive and highly successful propaganda campaign to paint Arbenz as a communist threat to the United States. Included in the campaign was a film that linked the taking of United Fruit’s land to the Communist Empire, awesomely titled Why The Kremlin Hates Bananas.

Some shit just writes itself. With the general public sufficiently convinced that Guatemala was a threat (good thing we don’t fall for shit like that anymore), the CIA was free to pounce and promptly launched “Operation PBSuccess.” They didn’t call it that because it failed. In short order, the US replaced the freely elected Arbenz with a right wing dictator more willing to answer to the demands of United Fruit and Guatemala’s brief flirtation with democracy and prosperity was over.

But this story does have a happy ending. The civil war that resulted from the CIA initiated coup did finally come to an end.

In 1996.
Iams Pet Food

Nutritious Dog Food, Cruelty

Boy do we Americans love us some misguided outrage. If the majority had their way, Michael Vick would have been bludgeoned to death by one of the Heartbreakers during the Super Bowl halftime show. Because, if there is one thing we don’t tolerate, it’s animal cruelty. At least not from NFL quarterbacks. Animal cruelty from major corporations though? Apparently not a problem.

People for the Ethical Treatmpent of Animals (PETA), known partly for saying batshit crazy things and for having the only public awareness campaign that people have ever masturbated to.

But, in between they sometimes actually do some good. One recent example happened in 2002 when, for nearly ten months, a PETA official went undercover at an Iams testing facility to expose harsh conditions inside the plant. What they found makes Michael Vick’s shenanigans look like some Arena League shit in comparison.

And, in case you suspected (as we did) that the stories were the product of PETA’s vegetable-induced imagination, they brought back a video of the facility that will ruin your day.

Most of the details, about mutilation and such, you really don’t want to hear about. Among the less nightmare-inducing tidbits were cats and dogs gone stir-crazy from constant confinement and an employee overheard talking about a live kitten that was accidentally washed down a drain. For fuck’s sake Iams! For you statistics geeks out there, one procedure performed at the Iams facility that involved (seriously, we’re not saying) resulted in 27 dogs being killed. Just one more record Michael Vick will never break.

When confronted with the findings from PETA, Iams attempted to turn the tables and blamed the undercover PETA official as the one responsible for the various atrocities, including a claim that the PETA official oversaw an incident in which several dogs were surgically debarked to keep them from crying out for attention. Because that’s exactly how PETA gets down. But a review of phone transcripts revealed the exact opposite. The PETA official actually tried to prevent the debarking. Iams officials acknowledged this to be the case also. And then probably beat their dogs out of frustration.

Coca-Cola

Refreshing Soft Drinks, Murder

Corporations don’t get much warmer and fuzzier than Coca-Cola. You think of fearsome NFL linemen tossing bright eyed kids their jerseys, playful polar bears frolicking in the snow, the world learning to sing in perfect harmony. Hell, some internet rumors even claim Coke invented Santa Claus.

The sweet bubbly deliciousness that is Coca Cola has been a beacon of happiness for generations of kids and adults alike, even those who weren’t lucky enough to have their Coke spiked with nose candy. With all of this universal joy spreading, some people may be surprised to find that Coke II isn’t the only atrocity lurking in the Big Red Machine’s closet.

If you work at one of the various Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, South America … fucking WHY? After all, there is probably less violence to be found working for a cocaine cartel in Colombia, South America. According to some descriptions, Colombia is “a country where union work is like carrying a tombstone on your back.” If you spend too much time thinking about it, you’ll realize that saying makes no damn sense, but just trust that it means working for a union in Colombia is a death sentence.

This is especially true at the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia. At the Carepa plant, five union leaders were murdered between 1994 - 1996 alone. In case after case, plant managers at bottlers throughout Colombia, afraid that being forced to give their workers that bump from $200 per month to $205 per month would bring their business to its knees, contracted with paramilitary groups to force unions at their plants to disband. In the most publicized case (meaning not really publicized at all, unless you count on the internet, which you shouldn’t), union executive board member Isidro Segundo Gil was shot ten times near the Carepa plant gates by paramilitary thugs purported to have been hired by the plant management.

The details of Gil’s assassination were outlined in a lawsuit filed against Coca-Cola by the International Labor Rights Fund. Of course, that the thugs were acting on the direction of plant management is just an allegation, but the fact that the thugs returned the next day demanding that workers quit the union is at least a little suspicious. There is also the issue of them having resignation forms prepared in advance by plant managers in hand when they made these demands. But still, these are just allegations. You shouldn’t assume anything. Like the old saying goes, “when you assume, you just make an ass out of u and me and evil corporations that condone the slaughtering of their own employees.”

Dole Bananas

Nutritious Fruit, Sterility-Causing Pesticides

Making their second appearance on the list, bananas are the standard bearer when it comes to corporate atrocity. Following in the heinous footsteps of Chiquita, Dole has a long track record of bringing the pain to South American countries unlucky enough to grow their shit. And unlike most other companies on this list, Dole didn’t even try to hide their hell raising ways. Kudos!

When several chemical workers became sterile, tests determined the cause to be a pesticide made at the plant where they worked called DBCP. When tests revealed it caused liver, kidney and lung damage, the Environmental Protection Agency banned its use in the United States. Proving themselves to be a paragon of classiness, Dole made note of the “in the United States” part of the ban and continued to use DBCP overseas. When Dow Chemicals informed Dole of their concerns over the safety of DBCP, Dole did what any company concerned with the well being of its fellow man would do. They advised Dow they would be in breach of their contract if they refused to provide them with DBCP for overseas use and agreed to take any liability for the resulting damage it may cause.

A brave move, agreeing to take the liability. Or at least it would be if they thought for a second that they would ever have to act on it. When Nicaraguan banana workers suffering the ill effects of DBCP exposure sought legal advice on how best to proceed with a lawsuit against Dole, they were told about the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens, a latin term meaning “fuck a third world farm worker.” Ok, it really means “inconvenient forum” and states a case can be dismissed on the grounds that it would be more appropriate to hear it in another locale, like the impossibly corrupt courts of the plaintiff’s home country, for instance.

Rather than taking their case to the Nicaraguan courts, which would be about as effective as taking the case to Judge Judy, the workers pressured the Nicaraguan government to find a different way to see to it that justice was served. The Nicaraguan National Assembly passed Law 364 in January 2001, to help banana workers gain compensation from companies that used DBCP. The law, which establishes a rapid procedure for workers who bring judgments before the courts, was immediately challenged by Dole along with several chemical companies. So far, despite court ordered judgments favoring Nicaraguan banana workers totaling more than $400 million, the workers have yet to see a dime.

One banana worker was quoted as saying “I ask the companies…to have a little bit of conscience with us.” We’d like to thank that worker for providing us with the funniest line of this article so far.

Nestle Quik

Delicious Chocolate Milk, Child Slaves

For any youngster that cringes at the thought of having to choke down a glass of plain milk with their dinner, Nestle Quik is a little box of magic. One tablespoon of the powdery goodness that is Nestle Quik can transform that glass of white nasty into a delectable cup of chocolately awesome. Add to this the fact that every box is emblazoned with an adorable cartoon rabbit, and what you have is a certified childhood dream maker.

At least this much is true for most kids; lazy, shiftless bastards that they are. Some kids, on the other hand, have to work for their Nestle Quik. Without going into the grizzly details that we’re sure you aren’t coming to a comedy website looking for, we’ll just say this. The majority of the world’s cocoa supply comes from Africa’s Ivory Coast. There are probably a lot of things that are illegal in the Ivory Coast, child labor, trafficking or (oh dear) slavery are not any of them. But hey, if it’s alright with the bunny, how bad can it be?

After years of flying under the atrocity radar, word of the unspeakably harsh conditions on Ivory Coast cocoa plantations finally came out in 2001. In the face of an influx of negative publicity, Nestle valiantly leapt into inaction. After issuing a few public statements claiming they had no way of knowing who did what where and when, it took a rider attached to an agricultural bill to get Nestle to even acknowledge the problem. The new legislation, passed in July, 2001, would have created a federal system to certify and label chocolate products as “slave free,” a label Nestle would qualify for if it weren’t for all the enslaved children making their shit.

Even if they did qualify, on the list of words you don’t want printed on the label of your product, “slave” comes in at a solid #3, right behind “Hitler” and “shit.” To avoid having to abide by the new legislation, Nestle agreed to a voluntary protocol to end forced labor on cocoa farms by 2005. Being that the major chocolate companies would be overseeing this new program, it wasn’t too surprising that nothing ever came of it.

When 2005 came and went with little to no change, Nestle was ready with one of the stupidest excuses imaginable. According to them, an escalating civil war in the Ivory Coast prevented them from sending anyone in to monitor the situation. Amazingly though, their team of buyers, who must consist of nothing but crack military commandos, have yet to have a problem getting in and out completely unscathed.

To add even less credibility to their claim that making delicious treats without at least some slave help wasn’t possible, several chocolate companies are now selling “Fair Trade” chocolate which is monitored to insure no slave labor is used in its production, though some sophisticated consumers say that chocolate isn’t as good, since it does not contain the unique flavor of the bitter tears of children.

We don’t want to pile on Nestle, though. If we wanted to do that, we would bring up the third-world babies that died from Nestle formula, or the company demanding millions from famine-stricken Ethiopia over a 1975 business transaction or … fuck it, we’re getting depressed.