Britton and I recently watched the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, a documentary about an Australian man who was about 80-90 pounds overweight and decided to go on a juice fast for 60 days in America. The fast would help as he called it “reboot” his system and encourage or inspire Americans to try juicing during his road trip. Along the way he met a few people who were up to the challenge and decided to try the juice fast as well.

The juicer hidden amongst the various fruits and vegetables

We thought it sounded interesting and had positive results. A sort of opposite Super-Size Me. Since we already like fresh-squeezed juice -usually just citrus, we thought we’d try juicing other things. We researched a few brands and some of our friends recommended the Jack LaLanne brand. It’s a mid-range price model. At about $100 it’s a little spendy, but it meets some of our criteria: 1) It’s health-promoting 2) it’s for food (we have to eat something anyway) and 3) it’s something we can both enjoy together. We are planning to do a week long juice fast this week, but so far we’ve just been enjoying trying out various recipes.

We usually shop at King Soopers for our general shopping but went over to Sprouts to pick up a bunch of fruit and vegetables because Sprouts has the best prices on fresh fruit and vegetables. For instance, we got cucumbers, red and green peppers all for 33 cents each! Plus they have a lot of organic options as well.

Here are some of the recipes we have tried out:
Power Up:
4 celery stalks
1/2 cup spinach
1 medium apple
1/2 cucumber
1/2 green bell pepper
This Power Up recipe is similar to the Mean Green recipe in the movie except they used kale instead of spinach

Power Up Recipe (Doubled)

The green juices are even better for you than the fruit juices because there is a lot less sugar (from fruit).

Glasses of Green Juice

It’s kind of strange to drink green juice, but it actually tastes really pretty good. Like a green garden in summer with a little sweetness from the apple. It’s cool how the fresh juice is all frothy too.

We also tried the Carrot/Apple/Ginger Juice:
2 medium carrots
1 apple
1 inch of ginger root

Ingredients for carrot juice

Carrot going down the shute

Carrot/Apple/Ginger Juice
Carrot is surprisingly sweet when it is juiced. It’s really good, even without the apple. We made some with just carrot and celery and it was really refreshing.

We are looking forward to summer when we will have our garden to help provide us with juicer fodder. We were also thinking about Puerto Rico. It will definitely be useful when we have all the mangoes from that huge tree falling all over the property.

Pulp headed for the chickens

Besides juice, it also has the pulp which is most of the fiber. This is good to use as well. Carrot, zucchini and apple pulps can all be put in breads and cakes. The vegetable pulps can be used in savory meals like meat loaf or omelettes. We’ve even made a sorbet with some of the tropical fruit pulp like pineapple, mango and orange. The pulp we don’t use goes to the chickens which makes their eggs even healthier! Works out great. Nothing goes to waste.

I’ll keep you up to date on the juice fast that is coming up. Hopefully it will work out well. We don’t have 80 lbs to lose, but we could use a boost in energy and antioxidants and we could all use a little help getting those 5-9 daily recommended fruits and vegetables!