Wheatgrass Functional Shot Base

Wheatgrass is the freshly sprouted first leaf of common wheat, Triticum aestivum. Grown indoors it is cut at roughly seven to nine days, before jointing; field-grown material is cut at the jointing stage. Either way the harvested fraction is green leaf and shoot only, taken before a grain head has formed. Thovek supplies that leaf in two distinct bases: a spray-dried juice powder, made by pressing the cut grass and drying the clarified juice, and a milled whole-leaf grass powder, made by dehydrating and grinding the leaf itself. The juice powder disperses cleanly and is the usual choice for a 30-60 mL shot; the whole-leaf powder retains insoluble leaf fibre and suspends rather than dissolves. This is a greens base, not a finished consumer good, and we describe it only on composition. Wheatgrass leaf carries chlorophyll, which is what gives the powder its colour and much of its appeal in a greens format; chlorophyll is measured and reported per lot rather than sold against a fixed minimum, because it moves with cultivar, season, light and cut height. We make no therapeutic or disease claim for the material and ask that finished-product copy be built on your own market's permitted nutrition wording. The commercially important point is allergen labelling. Wheatgrass is a product of wheat, and EU Regulation 1169/2011 Annex II lists cereals containing gluten, namely wheat, and products thereof, with no exemption covering wheatgrass. Buyers labelling for the EU should expect to declare wheat. Separately, the leaf itself carries no grain endosperm, so the practical gluten risk is cross-contact from residual seed and the root mat at cutting; we control that at harvest and verify it by R5 ELISA on every lot. A 'gluten-free' claim needs 20 mg/kg or less under EU Regulation 828/2014 and Codex STAN 118-1979, and we will only certify a lot to that level against test data, never by default.