On campus, it is not unusual to see students hitting up the vegan food bar at the Marketplace at Wilbur, sipping soymilk at Stern or making the trip to Trader Joe’s for banana chips and dried cranberries. Other food venues on campus also offer a variety of healthy options. Jamba Juice, for example, whose lines at Stanford often run out the door, offers a variety of “boosts” that can be added to the smoothies.

On the Jamba Juice menu is also an item fewer students order, but some health food mavens swear by: wheatgrass. Sold by the 2-oz. shot, wheatgrass is marketed on the Jamba Juice Web site as “liquid sunshine in one little shot”; the Web site also boasts that it is a detoxifier and provides amino acids, enzymes, vitamins and minerals.

But does a shot of what is essentially a relative of lawn grass really deliver what Jamba Juice and other health food stores promise? Is it worth your hard earned money?

According to Vivian Crisman, nutritionist at Vaden Health Center, the health craze surrounding wheatgrass is more marketing than truth.

“Wheatgrass is grass,” said Crisman. “Most often it’s marketed as a blended shot [like at Jamba Juice], boost or juice — and then it’s just liquefied chlorophyll.”

Chlorophyll is a functional chemical in plants that helps them turn the sun’s rays into glucose. But what exactly can liquefied chlorophyll do for the human body? According to Stanford Jamba Juice employee Angeline Gianfermo, a blended shot of wheat grass is a juice that is “good for the skin and good for the digestive system.”

Living-foods.com, a Web site that has information on all-natural and organic food products, advocates wheatgrass as an antibiotic, appetite suppressant and energizer. According to the site, the chlorophyll reacts with toxins in the body’s cells and tissues and brings them into the bloodstream to be excreted at a later time. The website also makes the claim that wheatgrass acts as a deodorizer with the ability to subdue the stench that comes with consumption of certain food and beverages or use of tobacco.

But Crisman said these are merely “crazy claims that aren’t substantiated.” The amount of wheat grass in a shot is unlikely improve your body’s performance drastically, she added.

“[Wheat grass juice] isn’t loaded with proteins or vitamins or calcium or fiber,” Crisman said. “[Marketers of wheat grass] make these bold claims, but they don’t show up as facts on the nutrition label.”

Yet the substance still remains popular. Jamba Juice first began marketing wheatgrass as a blended shot five years ago, and according to Gianfermo, there are 20 to 30 requests for wheatgrass on campus each day.

Sophomore Hamida Hamza once tried a shot of wheatgrass at Jamba Juice, but couldn’t stand the taste.

“It tasted awful,” said Hamza. “And I don’t think it made me feel any better.”

Crisman said that she thought the energizing effects of drinking wheatgrass shots are likely to be psychological.

“Any effect someone feels would probably be the result of the placebo effect, but it’s hard to quantify,” she said. “Asking someone, ‘do you feel a boost of energy after drinking this?’ isn’t measurable. If you tell someone that something is going to happen, you can’t tell whether the effects are real or perceived.”