Fantastic Claims About Chlorophyll’s Actions In the Body

The same folks who rail against unnatural toxins in food and shout that should “never eat what you can’t pronounce” will happily gobble up those same unpronounceable chemicals, as long as they are marketed by a supplement company run by their favorite food alarmist. Do you want the public to change its opinion of an organic chemical? Stick it in a bottle, claim it does this or that for the body, and put it on the natural health store shelf. One of those chemicals is chlorophyll. In this article, I’m going to discuss some of the marketing claims made about chlorophyll as a dietary supplement. My apologies if I rant a bit along the way.

Chlorophyll, as you know, is what allows plants to absorb energy from the sun. It is certainly not bad for you. The chemicals I was ranting about above may not be bad for you per se. In fact, they may not have any action whatsoever in the human body. Yet, in pill or liquid form under the guise of “dietary supplement,” they are gobbled up by a health-concerned public who would run away screaming from the same chemical (name) found on a food label. Is chlorophyll one of these?

Chlorophyll is used as a colorant in foods. But chlorophyll is very unstable and there are a great many complex things to be considered in the extraction and production of chlorophyll colorants. The chemical that ends up in foods is not the chemical that was originally found in living plant materials. Most often it is Sodium Copper Chlorophyllin.

According to the FDA, sodium copper chlorophyllin is “a green to black powder prepared from chlorophyll by saponification and replacement of magnesium by copper. Chlorophyll is extracted from alfalfa (Medicago sativa ) using any one or a combination of the solvents acetone, ethanol, and hexane…Sodium copper chlorophyllin may be safely used to color citrus-based dry beverage mixes in an amount not exceeding 0.2 percent in the dry mix.” ¹

I have no trouble imagining some of those concerned food bloggers crying foul over this “chemical” on their food label. Many reactionaries are too busy reacting to ever have heard of chlorophyll in the first place. But they may have some cause for asking questions because it is a natural chemical that has been heated, chemically extracted, adulterated, etc. It has to be, otherwise, you would not get that great green color. Because the chemical is, as I said, too unstable. You want green, not brown.

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Yet chlorophyll as a dietary supplement is proclaimed by some manufacturers to be equivalent to the snake oil remedies of old. I also have no trouble imaging some of those very same zealots drinking down their chlorophyll supplement after reading from Joseph Mercola, Vani Hari, or some other huxter about how very bad the sodium copper chlorophyllin found in foods is but how very good his chlorophyll supplement is.

person shopping and reading food label in store

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They may be surprised to find out, then, should they bother to read the ingredients on the supplement label, that their supplement is, you guessed it, sodium copper chlorophyllin.

I am quite certain that the same chemical on a food label, “sodium copper chlorophyllin,” will cause grave concern even though it is happily consumed in the form of a supplement. The supplement industry, of course, is subject to the same constraints as the food industry. They cannot pull stable chlorophyll out of their as..hats, after all.

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Health Claims For Chlorophyll Supplements

So, what is this chlorophyll supposed to do for your body? That is, what does it do when you take it in a supplement? A popular claim is that it “promotes cleansing” and it is an “internal deodorizer.” That probably sounds good to most folks. People want their insides to be clean and they don’t them to stink.

But it doesn’t stop there. You see, chlorophyll, even though it is not seen as “anything special” by biochemists and nutritionists, is converted to BLOOD in the body! I’ll bet you did not know that when you ate a nice salad the chlorophyll in the leaves was converted into blood! We should be so lucky.

According to Ann Wigmore, author of the “Wheatgrass Book,” chlorophyll is a living battery:

First, it’s role in converting the sun’s energy into a form that plants (and animals and people) can use. Chlorophyll is a sort of living battery. An animal’s body also stores and produces heat and energy: the difference is that plants can get their energy directly from the sun, whereas animals and humans cannot.

IN essence, the same life force in nature that explodes into greenery every spring can be transferred into the human body via the consumption of wheatgrass juice. The body can then use this super-nutritious, vital energy to heal and repair itself as needed. ¹

This is a great example of how to write a good book. When in doubt, sound vague and esoteric. That energy plants make are called sugars and starches.

She then makes one of the most popular assertions about chlorophyll, that it is very similar to hemoglobin, which is the compound that carries oxygen to our blood. The idea is that the body can take chlorophyll, as it is, and turn it into hemoglobin. It’s just a bit of alchemy. Let’s not bother with nutrition:

The second important nutritional aspect of chlorophyll ) as you may recall from our discussion in Chapter 2) is its remarkeable similarity to hemoglobin, the compojnd that carries oxygen in the blood. ²

Here, she talks about a Japanese scientist who thinks that chlorophyll can be absorbed like fat particles, directly into the blood via the lymphatic system and once inside the body the magnesium ion in the chlorophyll will be replaced with an iron molecule, making new blood. In other words, when “plant blood” is ingested, it’s made into human blood. This Japanese scientist is, in a word, misguided.

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There has been much more. The fantastic claims for chlorophyll have been, at times, on a par with claims about colloidal silver supplements. For instance, chlorophyll has been claimed to:

prevent the growth of bacteria and yeasts in wounds and the digestive tract
deodorize the body from within to stop bad breath and body odors
remove drug residue and toxins from the body
deactivate carcinogens
stop tooth decay and gingivitis (if used on the teeth)
counteract all sorts of inflammations in many parts of the body
renew skin and other tissue
counteract radiation
promote the growth of friendly flora in the gut
improve the liver
activate enzymes to produce vitamins

Of all those ridiculous claims, I have to say I find the last one the most hilarious because it is so easy to refute. It is almost childish in its gleeful supposition that we don’t know enough about metabolic enzyme paths in the body to know that chlorophyll has NO function in any of them.

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Scientific Evidence For Chlorophyll As a Nutraceutical

What about the science behind chlorophyll as a nutraceutical? Well there has been some research into chlorophyll’s (chlorophyllin’s) antimutagenic and anticarcinogenic properties. The idea is that it may protect DNA against ionizing radiation and that it may be an anti-tumor and also protect against side effects from anti-cancer drugs.

Chlorophyll, its metabolites, and chlorophyllin have shown some in vitro antimutagenic and anticarcinogenic effects against some substances that are know or suspected carcinogens, but there is absolutely no evidence and no real reason to think, yet, that chlorophyll ingestion will protect against these substances in the body through ingestion. The problem is that this is in vitro, meaning in a petri dish. There is no reason to think that ingesting chlorophyll will protect you from cancer and radiation.
Chlorophyll, once you ingest it, is subject to the same harsh digestive environment as everything else you eat.

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Is Chlorophyll A Nutrient?

There is no evidence that chlorophyll has any nutritional value, in itself. It contains magnesium, so that’s good. In fact, 15 to 30% of the magnesium in plants may be associated with the chlorophyll. And it may have copper if it’s the stabilized kind. Beyond this, though, even if chlorophyll could do something great in your body, the stuff would never make it into your body in its whole form, or at least hardly ever. Yes, it is used as an internal “deodorant” but many things are used for purposes that make no sense.

Another thing that the FDA says about sodium copper chlorophyllin is that it is exempt from certification. “Certification of this color additive is not necessary for the protection of the public health, and therefore batches thereof are exempt from the certification requirements of section 721(c) of the act.” ¹

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Won’t the “government is bad supplements are good” crowd be confused by all this? If the FDA says that something is not considered to be harmful to human health—that, essentially, they aren’t concerned about it then it MUST be bad! Big brother, after all is in league with everything evil in order to ruin our health and get our money. But the supplement companies, they are out to help us. They wouldn’t lie to us. They aren’t evil like big food and big government. They want to save mankind. Shoot. Isn’t this a big green pickle?