Charles Schnabel

Charles Franklin Schnabel (1895-1974) was an American agricultural chemist who became known as the father of wheatgrass. Dr. Schnabel opened the door to scientific research on cereal grass. After Schnabel’s initial work in the mid1920s that showed chickens nearly tripled their winter egg production when a small amount of cereal grass was added to their diet, he went on to find benefits with nearly every kind of livestock. His research documented larger litters, richer milk, more milk, less infant mortality, better fur and improved general health when a small amount of dehydrated cereal grass was added to the animal’s food ration.

File:Charles F. Schnabel, Sr 80pct.jpg Charles Schnabel was born in Ionia, Missouri, in 1895. He graduated from the University of Missouri, Columbia, with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1918 at which time he was also granted a lifetime teaching certificate in vocational agriculture and chemistry. He taught at the high school level in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, from 1920 -1922. From 1922-1928, Schnabel was a chemist for Standard Milling Company, Kansas City, where he first began his research into the proteins of leafy green vegetables and cereal grasses. Schnabel's discovery of the nutritional value of grasses as a food occurred in 1931 which led to his first patent application in 1933. By 1935 he was a research chemist for the company he founded, Cerophyl Laboratories, where he stayed for the remainder of his career.

On April 15, 1933, Charles F. Schnabel, a former feed mill chemist, applied for a patent for a 'feed' product that he developed for both animal and human consumption. The patent was for processing young grass shoots from wheat, barley and rye crops as a dietary supplement that provided unique health benefits from the chlorophyll. Schnabel studied many aspects of growth and nutrition associated with cereal grasses. He found that some soils were not suitable for providing high quality cereal grasses, and that the nutrients provided by these green plants varied with the stage of growth of the grasses. He gave the dehydrated grasses, an economical and practical food supplement, to his family of seven. As reported in the Buffalo Courier Express, none of his children ever had a serious illness or a decayed tooth.

In order to make this food available to more people, Schnabel started Cerophyl Laboratories in the 1930s. Cerophyl was a company that produced what some called “the world's first multivitamin.” At about the same time Schnabel was documenting the nutritional and health benefits of dehydrated cereal grass for both animals and humans, vitamins were being discovered. Schnabel applied these new vitamin analysis protocols to dehydrated cereal grass harvested at the jointing stage. Charles Schnabel's wheatgrass was wholefood powder, grown slowly in cold weather, and was used in an extensive body of both animal and human medical research. Schnabel did not grow his wheatgrass indoors and did not use juice, but rather the dried wholefood powder.

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