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With winter firmly upon us, a lot of Aussies will be worried about whether their immune systems are up to the challenge. Outside of the balmy north, temperatures around the country have dropped and cold and flu bugs are lurking around every corner.
Of course, there are lots of precautions you can take to reduce your chances of falling victim to a dose of the sniffles (or something more serious). You can make sure you wrap up warm, even if your winter coat is last season. You can carry anti-bacterial hand wash to keep germs at bay – particularly if you’re using public transport. And you can also give your immune system a helping hand by getting a flu shot or boosting your vitamin intake.
A bright green shot in the arm
You might already take vitamin supplements to support your body’s natural defences and you can also add to your vitamin quota through your diet. If you own a juicer or live near a juice bar, you might want to check out wheatgrass as an alternative to more traditional juice ingredients.
Wheatgrass is a great source of vitamins, calcium and iron. It’s very popular with people on detox diets and it can be a novel way to get a big dose of goodness into your system just when you need it. Rather than chomping through a plate of veggies, you can knock back a glass of wheatgrass juice, which has more protein per ounce than both broccoli and spinach.
Mixing up some wheatgrass recipes
So if you’re planning to make wheatgrass part of your ‘stay healthy for winter’ strategy, you’ll need some recipe ideas. Unless you’re a cow (or a human with four stomachs) you won’t be able to eat wheatgrass. Your best bet is to juice it, but even then it taste like grass, so you might want to jazz it up a bit. Here are some suggestions:
Shot and mixer: take the wheatgrass as a shot and use a standard mixer (tonic water, lemonade etc) to take the edge off what can be quite a potent flavour.
Full veggie: a quality juicer will be able to handle a lot more than a handful of wheatgrass, so you can throw in some cabbage greens and something sweeter like celery to add some different levels of flavour to your drink.
Fruit mask: finally, you can take some popular, sweet fruit like apple and melon and a flavoursome herb like mint to dominate the wheatgrass shot. You still get the goodness but you’ll hardly notice it go down.