Front line

Juicy Secrets

Juicy Secret ? Have you heard this......Juice isn't so juicy or as healthy as we thought.

'Juice' is just not like the fresh oranges my Mom bought and squeezed. She had a glass dish with a ridged knob on top where she twisted half an orange back and forth, and out came sweet juices, seeds, bits of pulp and packed with flavor for me when I was a bit under the weather and needed a little more liquid. I remember that orangie smell, and how I got to help pick out the seeds, or better yet, spit them out across the table into a cup with a "ping!"

Then, as a Mom in a rush, forgetting about real fresh juices, and wrapped up in raising my kids, I bought our juices in concentrated form, or even in cartons. Why not? It was faster and just as healthy right? They said it was "fortified with vitamins".

But what was going on? We weren't feeling so well. No one wanted to drink water (a whole 'nother story).
Sick all the time...that's just how it is. We began to accept that.

But wait, why do we accept that? Why do we keep buying the packaged 'juice' and then turn around and buy the packaged medicine to get better?

Many of us have clearly seen how making choices can lead us closer to what makes us well. I discovered another secret: Drinking good water is more effective for staying well, than drinking juice. 

One of the 'dirty little secrets' is there are less than healthy processes used to create packaged juices. We also have our sad (epidemic) overload of fructose in our daily diets. Dr. Mercola writes:

It may come as a surprise to learn that what you find in a carton of 100% pure, not-from-concentrate orange juice is nothing like what you'd get if you squeezed an orange into a glass in your own kitchen. Instead, many popular orange juice brands use a chemical process to create juice that tastes and smells like oranges!

Alissa Hamilton J.D, PhD, a Food and Society Policy Fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), explains the ins and outs of mass-produced juice in her book, Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice. It's a potent reminder of just how important it is to really understand how your food is manufactured and processed because the label tells neither the whole story nor the whole truth...   

For peace of mind in health:

• Eat whole fruits (the kind with seeds to spit out)
• Drink good purified water instead of buying juice ( saves more than just $$)
• Consider a healthy level of sugar (fructose) for wellness

Pssst: Knowing the juicy secret gives you the power to pass it on.          

Welcome To Our Journey

In an effort to combine all the decades of knowledge that my mom has passed on to me, as well as the decades of knowledge and experience in the health and wellness market, I decided that my mom and I should blog about our past lessons, new findings, and continue to share what we learn on our journey towards health and wellness.

Adrienne and Mary on the Towpath trail in Akron, Ohio