History of 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.
History of cereal grass